CSLS Speaker Series: “When Public Law Is Not Public Knowledge:​ Making the American Local Legal State Observable”

Event details Date: Monday, August 31, 2026 Time: 12:15 PM to 12:15 PM Type: Performing Arts About this event Featuring Diag Davenport, Assistant Professor of Technology Policy, Governance, and Society, UC Berkeley Abstract: Local governments regulate many of the rules that most directly shape daily life, yet their laws have remained fragmented, difficult to compare, and largely invisible to national research. This talk introduces LOCUS, a corpus of 9,239 city and county codes comprising roughly seven million pages; LEXCHEX, which tests whether leading AI systems can reliably answer questions grounded in local law; and new work mapping the accessibility, content, and regulatory form of the American local legal state. Together, these projects expose a gap between law being formally public and becoming usable public knowledge. I will present what the evidence can already establish—and invite discussion about the most important legal, institutional, and democratic questions this new infrastructure should make possible. Read the full paper here. Cosponsored with the Edley Center on Law and Democracy In-Person at 2240 Piedmont Ave and livestreamed via Zoom. This event will not be recorded. Light refreshments will be provided. Reception: 12:15-12:45 p.m. in the Kadish Library Program: 12:45-2:00 p.m. in the Philip Selznick Seminar Room Register for the livestream via Zoom. Please note that registration is not necessary for in-person attendance. Add this event to your Google Calendar. If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact csls@law.berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible. Official event details: https://events.berkeley.edu/law/event/327778-csls-speaker-series-when-public-law-is-not-public