Public policy must address threats that will manifest in the future. Legislation enacted today affects the severity of tomorrow’s harms arising from biotechnology, climate change, and artificial intelligence. This Essay focuses on Congress’s capacity to confront future threats. It uses a detailed case study of financial crises to show the limits and possibilities of legislation to prevent future catastrophes. By paying insufficient attention to Congress, the existing literature does not recognize the full nature and extent of the institutional challenges in regulating systemic risk. Fully recognizing those challenges reveals important design insights for future risk legislation.
Rory Van Loo
For valuable input, I am grateful to Hannah Bloch-Wehba, Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Danielle Citron, Julie Cohen, Christina Koningisor, Megan Ericson, Nikolas Guggenberger, Thomas Kadri, Daphne Keller, Louis Kaplow, Mark Lemley, Ngozi Okidegbe, Przemysław Pałka, Mitchell Polinsky, Steven Shavell, David Walker, editors at The University of Chicago Law Review, and participants at Boston University School of Law faculty workshop, Brooklyn Law School faculty workshop, Harvard Law and Economics Seminar, Junior Tech Law Scholars workshop, and Stanford Law and Economics Seminar. Brianne Allan, Jacob Axelrod, Samuel Burgess, Leah Dowd, Derek Farquhar, Shecharya Flatte, Chris Hamilton, Jack Langa, Kathleen Pierre, Tyler Stites, and Gavin Tullis provided excellent research assistance.
In the fall of 2017, the world’s largest social network put hundreds of women in “Facebook jail,” indefinitely suspending their accounts for posting “men are scum.”
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