Rebecca Wexler

Rebecca Wexler

  • Professor of Law
Education

J.D., Yale Law School, 2016
M.Phil., Cambridge University, 2006
A.B., Harvard College, 2005

Areas of Study

Rebecca Wexler’s teaching and research sit at the intersection of law and technology, with a specific focus on privacy and secrecy in the context of the criminal legal system. Her work has explored topics including trade secrets, data privacy, and law enforcement privilege. Wexler’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The Yale Law Journal Forum, NYU Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Texas Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Berkeley Technology Law Journal, as well as in peer-reviewed computer science publications. She joined Columbia Law School on July 1, 2025. 

Wexler served as a senior policy advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during spring of 2023, and she has testified before both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Her scholarly theories have been proposed for codification into federal law and litigated in multiple courts, including a cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her article “Privacy as Privilege” received the Privacy Law Scholars Conference Reidenberg-Kerr Award and was named a “Must Read” article by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Her op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among other outlets, and her work has been featured on NPR, among other media venues. 

Wexler clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and for Judge Katherine Polk Failla on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Prior to joining the Columbia Law faculty, she was the Hoessel-Armstrong Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she was also a faculty co-director of the Center for Law & Technology and the Center for Criminal Law & Justice.

Publications

Law Review Articles

  • Law Enforcement Privilege, 123 MICH. L. REV. __ (2025) (forthcoming).
  • Metrics Not Thresholds: How to Regulate AI and Other Expert Methods for Use in Criminal Investigations and Proceedings, 8 PENN. J.L. & INNOVATION __ (2025) (forthcoming symposium article).
  • Life, Liberty, and Data Privacy: The Global Cloud, the Criminally Accused, and Executive Versus Judicial Compulsory Process Power, 101 TEXAS L. REV. 1341 (2023).
  • Digital Privacy for Reproductive Choice in the Post-Roe Era, 98 N.Y.U. L. REV. 555 (2023) (with Aziz Huq).
  • Ignorance of the Rules of Omission: An Essay on Privilege Law, 76 VAND. L. REV. 1609 (2023) (symposium essay).
  • Verification Dilemmas, Law, and the Promise of Zero-Knowledge Proofs, 37 BERKELEY TECH. L.J. 1 (2022) (with Kenneth A. Bamberger, Ran Canetti, Shafi Goldwasser & Evan Zimmerman).
  • Privacy as Privilege: The Stored Communications Act and Internet Evidence, 134 HARV. L. REV. 2721 (2021).
  • Privacy Asymmetries: Access to Data in Criminal Defense Investigations, 68 U.C.L.A. L. REV. 212 (2021).
  • Life, Liberty and Trade Secrets: Intellectual Property in the Criminal Justice System, 70 STAN. L. REV. 1343 (2018).
  • The Private Life of DRM: How Fundamental Rights Frame Copyright Enforcement Reform, 17 YALE J.L. & TECH. 368 (2015).
  • Using Zero-Knowledge to Reconcile Law Enforcement Secrecy and Fair Trial Rights in Criminal Cases, Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law (ACM CSLaw), 2022 (with Dor Bitan, Ran Canetti & Shafi Goldwasser).

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • Using Zero-Knowledge to Reconcile Law Enforcement Secrecy and Fair Trial Rights in Criminal Cases, Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law (ACM CSLaw), 2022 (with Dor Bitan, Ran Canetti & Shafi Goldwasser).
  • Adversarial Scrutiny of Evidentiary Statistical Software, Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, & Transparency (ACM FAccT), 2022 (with Rediet Abebe, Moritz Hardt, Angela Jin, John Miller & Ludwig Schmidt).

Treatises

  • TRADE SECRET CASE MANAGEMENT JUDICIAL GUIDE, FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER (2023) (with David S. Almeling, Victoria A. Cundiff, Peter S. Menell, James Pooley, Elizabeth Rowe & Peter J. Toren).

Shorter Academic Works

  • Dobbs and Our Privacies, in ROE V. DOBBS: THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ABORTION (Lee C. Bollinger & Geoffrey R. Stone, eds., OUP 2024) (with Aziz Huq).
  • The Digital Battleground in the Fight for Reproductive Rights, in FIGHTING MAD: RESISTING THE END OF ROE V. WADE (Krystale Littlejohn & Rickie Solinger, eds., U.C. Press 2024) (with Aziz Huq).
  • Technology’s Continuum: Body Cameras, Data Collection, and Constitutional Searches, in VISUAL IMAGERY AND HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICE (Monroe Price & Sandra Ristovska, eds., 2018).
  • Gags as Guidance: Expanding Notice of National Security Letter Investigations to Targets and the Public, 31 BERKELEY TECH. L.J. 325 (2016) (note).
  • Warrant Canaries and Disclosure by Design: The Real Threat to National Security Letter Gag Orders, 124 YALE L.J. F. 158 (2014) (essay).
  • Book Note, 8 INT’L J. OF THE COMMONS 688 (2014) (reviewing PATRICK BURKART, PIRATE POLITICS: THE NEW INFORMATION POLICY CONTESTS (2014)).
  • Onward, Christian Penguins: Wildlife Film and the Image of Scientific Authority, 39 HIST. & PHIL. OF BIOLOGICAL & BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES 273 (2008).

Select Non-Academic Publications

  • AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court, Lawfare (March 10, 2025) (with Sarah Barrington, Emily Cooper & Hany Farid).
  • Criminal Defendants Should Have Access to Foreign Evidence, LAW360 (April 26, 2024) (with Kaylana Mueller-Hsia).
  • Big Tech can Help Women in a Post-Roe World. Will it?, WASH. POST (June 1, 2022) (with Aziz Huq).
  • It’s Time to End the Trade Secret Evidentiary Privilege Among Forensic Algorithm Vendors, BROOKINGS TECH POLICY BLOG (July 13, 2021).
  • Privacy Laws Should Help, Not Harm, Criminal Justice Reform, DAYONE TECHNOLOGY POLICY ACCELERATOR (Jan. 2021) (with John Villasenor).
  • How Well-Intentioned Privacy Laws can Contribute to Wrongful Convictions, BROOKINGS TECHNOLOGY POLICY BLOG (Feb. 11, 2020) (with John Villasenor).
  • How Data Privacy Laws Could make the Criminal Justice System even more Unfair, L.A. TIMES (July 31, 2019).
  • When a Computer Program Keeps you in Jail, N.Y. TIMES (June 13, 2017).
  • Code of Silence: How Private Companies Hide Flaws in the Software that Governments use to Decide who goes to Prison and who gets out, WASH. MONTHLY (June/July/Aug. 2017).
  • Why it’s so Difficult to Authenticate Videos that Appear to Show Human Rights Violations, SLATE (Feb. 28, 2017).
  • Convicted by Code, SLATE (Oct. 6, 2015).
  • U.N. Investigators for Sri Lanka, Show Your Work, GROUNDVIEWS (Aug. 8, 2014).
  • Transparency in the UNHRC Investigation of War Crimes in Sri Lanka, THE ISLAND May 8, 2014.
  • Integrity vs. Authenticity in Video Journalism, COMMIT. TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS (Dec. 13, 2012).
  • The Post-Wikileaks World, YALE GLOBAL ONLINE MAG. (Dec. 17, 2010).

Professional Experience

  • White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, senior policy advisor, January–June 2023
  • U.S. District Court, Southern District of N.Y., clerk to Judge Katherine Polk Failla, 2018–2019
  • U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, clerk to Judge Pierre N. Leval, 2017–2018
  • The Legal Aid Society Criminal Defense Practice, Yale public interest fellow, 2016–2017
  • The Data & Society Research Institute, lawyer-in-residence, 2016–2017
  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation, legal intern, summer 2014
  • Senior Fulbright advanced research and lecturing scholar, Sri Lanka, 2012
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