Jamil Jaffer (back to contents)

I come from a family of pioneers. We are not the kind of pioneers that traversed the American landscape in search of their fortune in the Wild West. Rather, I come from a family whose path began in the sweltering heat of India, crossed a vast ocean to the shores of East Africa, passed through the frigid climes of Canada, and ended in the sunshine of Southern California. My own personal journey has led me through many of these same locales and further—all the way to our nation’s capital.

My great-grandfather was an adventurous man. When the offer came to leave his homeland of India to travel to British East Africa, he jumped at the opportunity. He left his family and friends behind and boarded a ship bound for Tanzania with only the clothes he could fit into a burlap sack and some money his family had gathered together at the last minute. It was this same adventurous spirit that took hold of me toward the end of my college career, when I decided to move across the nation to Washington, D.C. Raised on a steady diet of National Public Radio and history books from the “discard” pile at the library, I always knew that I wanted to study the law. As a child, I was the kid who took my father’s portable radio to school in the fifth grade so that I could listen to the Iran-Contra hearings.

I considered applying directly to law school after graduating from UCLA. But after a period of self-examination, I realized that while my education at UCLA was excellent, it was not connected to the world outside. I wanted some practical experience and decided to seek my fortune in the District of Columbia. Leaving my family behind, I came to Washington without a job or a place to live, only with a burning desire to become a part of the American political process. Like my father, who came to Canada in 1969 with nothing but a few hundred dollars in his wallet and the name of an uncle he could stay with, I was looking for a place to call home.

With some effort and not a little bit of luck, I found a job on Capitol Hill working with computers, using some of the same skills that helped me pay my way through four years of college. Being so close to the political process, I began to hunger for legislative work. Within a few months, I was given legislative responsibility in defense, foreign affairs, trade and science policy. Combining these diverse areas with my technological background, I have begun to study the rapidly developing field of technology law.

My primary interest in this arena deals with intellectual property law. Recent court cases have supported the notion that an innovative business process may be patentable. Given the rapid pace of invention that is critical to the high-tech economy, such patents could potentially create a substantial barrier to competition. The expansion of the Internet into the world of commerce has created new challenges in protecting intellectual property without inhibiting the free market. Business process patents appear to have the effect of granting a government enforced monopoly over a vast range of technological and entrepreneurial processes. The threat of costly patent litigation alone could limit many investors from directing capital into new technologies. Some scholars argue that business process patents serve to protect all inventors, large and small alike. Such a position is tenable only when inventors have the resources and wherewithal to enforce their patents and to defend against competing claims. Given the large market capitalizations of established companies in this sector and their corresponding ability to bring substantial resources to bear on potential litigation, smaller inventors may have a difficult time raising the venture capital that has driven the rapid growth of the technology industry in recent years. It is important that Congress examine the patent laws to determine what beneficial or adverse effects these laws may have on the new information economy.

In working with technology issues and the development of innovative ideas, my interest in national security led me to consider the issue of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity raises the question of how these new ideas are protected while they reside on a global computer network. Information security goes directly to the question of whether the users of the Internet are able to rely on a secure and robust communications infrastructure. If consumers and businesses cannot be assured that their information will be protected, it is unlikely that the information economy will continue to grow at its current pace. This is a policy arena that crosses typical boundaries of law and policy, and raises issues of international law, national security policy, antitrust law and public-private sector relations. In this realm, it is important that the government consider the issues of infrastructure protection and information security education, while working closely with the private sector to bring its working expertise to bear on this important arena.

Many of these issues transcend traditional frameworks of political and academic organization. Having seen the process of lawmaking from the inside, I am ready to begin my study of the law and its interpretation. I come from a family committed to education, one that has instilled in me a strong work ethic. At the same time, I am the first of my family to attempt a law school education and the first to seek a career in public service. For me, law school is akin to the boat that my great-grandfather sailed to a new future—it is my passage to a pioneering adventure, studying the evolving intersection between technology and the law. I feel that the University of Chicago Law School will provide me with the opportunity to explore this largely uncharted field.

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