Morgan N. Weiland is an attorney and scholar whose research, legal practice, and policy work sit at the intersection of free speech theory, digital media, and technology ethics. She is the Executive Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, where she graduated in 2015. She proposed, helped design, and is in the process of completing the first joint degree program between SLS and Stanford’s Communication Department, where she is a PhD candidate.

Weiland’s dissertation investigates the structural role of speech platforms like Facebook and Twitter in the public sphere to understand what responsibilities these companies have to the public, and what policies ought to be enacted to ensure both free expression and accountability.

She presented her dissertation research at the 2018 Yale Law School Freedom of Expression Scholars’ Conference and the International Communication Association (ICA) conference, where her paper, The Paradox of Platforms-as-Press: Unwinding This Analogy to Solve the Platform Accountability Problem, was selected as the Top Student Paper for the Communication Law & Policy Division. Her 2017 Stanford Law Review article, Expanding the Periphery and Threatening the Core: The Ascendant Libertarian Speech Tradition, won the 2018 Harry W. Stonecipher Award for Distinguished Research in Media Law and Policy, awarded by AEJMC. She is the first graduate student to win this award.

During the 2017-18 academic year, Weiland was a Lecturer in Law at SLS. She developed and taught a new course about platforms, law, and ethics with Professor Barbara van Schewick. She is also a Graduate Fellow at SLS’s Center for Internet & Society, where she’s written about network neutrality.

She clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals during the 2018-19 term. She is admitted to the California Bar.