I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. You can read more about me and my work here.
I do a lot of research on governance and institutions, especially knowledge, information, and data sharing – so-called “knowledge commons.” I write about intellectual property law and innovation and creation.
I’m a huge fan of soccer (sometimes “football”), as a former player, coach, and referee. I’m a student and practitioner of the leadership arts. I pay attention to the politics of urbanism.
I’ve been posting here at madisonian.net on and off since 2004, much of that time with the help of law professor colleagues. The current incarnation of the site is eclectic.
Some material has to do with “governance,” the label that I’ve given the site since early 2020. Governance is a catch-all word that captures collaborative problem-solving in complex systems. Governance means law, rules, customs, norms, and practices in groups. Governance keeps messiness (sort of) in order. Knowledge commons is the focus of most of my research on governance.
Some material has to do with a specific case of governance: law, legal systems, legal institutions, and legal education itself. All of those things both produce governance (they generate and identify actors and links among them) and consist of governance (rules and standards). For a deeper dive into legal education and the future of lawyers, steer over to “Future Law Works” and the podcast called “The Future Law Podcast.”
Some material has to do with governance in modern cities. From 2003 to 2011, I published Pittsblog, about regional economic development and the post-industrial re-emergence of one particularly interesting city and region: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is interesting in itself. Pittsburgh is interesting as a case study of urban and regional planning, development, and change in the 20th and 21st centuries. And Pittsburgh is interesting because of the conceptual and practical disconnects between law, business, and culture in Pittsburgh, a technology center of a sort, and Silicon Valley, where I grew up, went to school, and worked for a while as a lawyer.
Find me on Twitter at @profmadison.
This site has a short and simple Privacy Policy.