The Harvard University law professor appointed "special master" by Federal US District Judge Thomas Jackson to continue gathering information in the Microsoft investigation is an expert in the law of cyberspace, contracts and Constitutional law.
Lawrence Lessig has been at Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, since last August. Before then, he taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was co-director of the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe, according to a statement made by Harvard when Lessig was hired there.
He has written extensively about legal issues in cyberspace. An article he wrote for the Emory Law Review in 1996 was cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in her concurrence with the majority opinion in the ruling that struck down the Communications Decency Act as unconstitutional.
Lessig is working on a book about the law of cyberspace which will explore that area as it compares to constitutional law and examine problems that might be created in regulating cyberspace, according to the Harvard announcement.
Lessig received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1989 and also earned a master's degree in philosophy from Trinity College at Cambridge University in England. He has a bachelor of arts in economics and a bachelor of science in management from the University of Pennsylvania.
Jackson set a May 31 deadline for Lessig to finish gathering information about Microsoft and report back to the court.
Harvard University can be reached online at http://www.harvard.edu/.