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Colorado Law Professor Margot Kaminski has been named Moses Lasky Professor of Law, one of the school’s highest faculty distinctions. With this honor, Professor Kaminski joins previously named Moses Lasky Professors including Suzette Malveaux, Sarah Krakoff, and Charles Wilkinson.����

“It's a true honor to be awarded the Moses Lasky Professorship, and a responsibility I don't take lightly,” Kaminski said. “Lasky was one of our most distinguished alumni, who combined high intellectual achievement with a dedication to civic involvement and public service. I understand and value this legacy and am grateful for the recognition and support for my ongoing work."��

Kaminski began her time at Colorado Law as Associate Professor and Director of in fall 2017. She was granted tenure in 2020 and promoted to Professor of Law in 2023. Prior to joining Colorado Law, Professor Kaminski was an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law (2014-17) and served for three years as the Executive Director of the (2011-2014). She is a co-founder of the , and previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Andrew J. Kleinfeld of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Fairbanks, Alaska.����

As a leading scholar in law and technology with a focus on information governance, privacy, and freedom of expression, it may be surprising to some that Kaminski's career began at a literary agency in New York, before she even began her law school career.����

“I started getting interested in the intersection of the digital economy and copyright law, because we were doing a lot of contracts at a time that envisioned what eventually became the era of e-books,” Kaminski said. “There was also a Supreme Court case that came down [at that time] about author's rights and digital copies, and that is basically why I ended up applying to law school...that got me interested more generally in the pacing of regulation to technological and social change.”����

Kaminski eventually delayed her entrance into Yale Law by a year, moving to San Francisco to work in publishing and for Larry Lessig’s Creative Commons nonprofit – further solidifying her interesting in law and technology.����

Her plan to focus on copyright law gradually shifted, as many of the copyright conversations Kaminski witnessed in law school related to privacy online. The political and economic landscape also set the stage for this shift, as many of the major rights holders at the time were pushing for intermediaries, such as telecommunications companies, to monitor web and personal download traffic for copyright piracy. Additionally, many of Kaminski's friends and colleagues were wrestling with post-9/11 national security issues, repeatedly raising the topic of privacy.�� ��

“This led me to wonder, what exactly is happening with privacy on the internet?”��

Kaminski’s shift to privacy law solidified after a summer internship with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, setting her on the path to becoming a leading legal scholar working at the intersection of privacy, AI, and freedom of expression.����

“One of the reasons it is important to me to share my origins in publishing is because we have a lot of students that see some of these fields as inaccessible without a technology or engineering background,” Kaminski shared. “I had a humanities background and an interest in the history of science. You can really come at these careers with a wide variety of backgrounds. I encourage students to not get discouraged by some of the perceived barriers to working in law and technology.”��

Kaminski’s work has received the 2025 Sandgrund Award for Best Consumer Rights Work; the 2022 Jules Milstein Scholarship Award for excellence in legal scholarship; the Future of Privacy Forum's 2020 Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award; the 2019 University of Colorado Provost's Faculty Achievement Award for Pre-Tenure Faculty; and the 2016 Junior Scholar Award at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference. Two particularly noteworthy moments in her career came when she was awarded two Fulbright scholarships – the first in 2018 and the second in 2024.��

The 2018 grant—a 6-month Fulbright-Schuman Innovation Grant–provided Kaminski with the opportunity to conduct research on policies in the European Union (EU). The time at which she applied proved to be a critical moment for the EU, as they were in the middle of massively rehauling their data privacy laws. While her intention was to look at the EU framework regarding privacy law and drones, the resulting research took a different turn.����

“Rather than producing a series of papers about drones, privacy, and free speech, I came out of that experience with a deep set of questions around regulating autonomous systems and artificial intelligence (AI). I then spent the next 5-6 years doing comparative work on that subject.”��

During that time, several U.S. states passed data privacy laws. Consequently, for her sabbatical in 2023-24, Kaminski applied for and was granted a second Fulbright-Schuman Grant, and a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute (EUI), allowing her to return to Europe to research the EU AI Act.����

“Having the time to do that [research] and be around experts in European law gave me the ability to understand the law more from a European perspective, and to better explain it to people in the U.S.” ��Kaminski said.����

Kaminski's Fulbright experiences have been foundational in positioning her as a leading legal scholar researching AI policy. In fact, over the past two years, she has been co-authoring a casebook on AI law with (Georgetown Law Center) and (UCLA School of Law). The book is slated to be submitted to the publisher (Foundation Press/West) in early 2026, with the hope that it will be ready for new adopters in the coming academic year.����

“It has been such a treat for me to work with Paul and Andrew, who are at the top of their game in their field and who bring different things to the table,” Kaminski said. “We have this shot to figure out how to understand the logic of these [AI] questions and to influence countless attorneys in practice and in policymaking roles and help them think about what questions matter in this emerging field.” ��

In addition to her research and scholarship, Kaminski has also supported policymaking efforts in a variety of capacities. She has served on Columbus, Ohio’s Body Cam Task Force Community Group, Colorado’s Task Force for the Consideration of Facial Recognition Services, and the Colorado AI Act Task Force.����

“Throughout the entirety of my career, policy impact has really mattered to me. I might write stuff that is highly theoretical, but for me it all has the end goal of figuring out why the pieces fall into place the way they do. As a participant in policymaking, my job is to consistently offer what information I have gleaned from research and try to steer us a steady course as the waves of politics move around us.”����

For one of her upcoming projects, Kaminski is working on a piece on data privacy and the First Amendment that aims to offer judges and litigants a workable and doctrinally defensible framework for how to think about First Amendment challenges to data privacy laws.����

Kaminski’s impact on both the broader legal community and Colorado Law cannot be overstated. Her work has been published in publications such as the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and Boston University Law Review. Through it all, she remains incredibly grateful for the steadfast support she has received here at Colorado Law.��

“I just love my colleagues. This community is a balance of incredibly intellectual, bright, driven, and kind people. We are super supportive of each other, and when my colleagues have career accomplishments, it feels like the whole team has won.”��

Kaminski also noted the importance of work-life balance, remarking that her fellow faculty truly understand that life is bigger than a computer screen, and make room for each other’s families, quirks, and ongoing serious hobbies. She even shared one of her own – working as a PSIA-certified ski instructor for the past 20 years.����

“I never thought I would be in a position in life where I could continue to have that secret identity and have this career.”��

It is with great pride that we share the news of Professor Kaminski’s named professorship. Our heartiest congratulations go out to her, and we look forward to the continued impact of her exceptional teaching, scholarship, and vision.��