New Privacy Law Research Guide Provides Access to Rapidly Evolving Legal Trends

According to a news report from Bloomberg Law, a wave of state legislatures are currently considering consumer privacy legislation, driven by the 2018 Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal, the new California consumer privacy law set to take effect in 2020, and the European Union’s comprehensive approach to privacy under its GDPR framework. Privacy law in the United States is frequently described as a “patchwork” of state and federal law, as there is currently no comprehensive federal law governing privacy.

The Kathrine R. Everett Law Library has created a new Privacy Law Research Guide to help researchers navigate the complexities of this rapidly-evolving patchwork of laws in our increasingly technology-driven world.  The new guide directs researchers to sources of privacy law including federal statutes, 50-state comparisons of state statutes, federal and state constitutional provisions, the common law, and regulatory enforcement actions. It also features privacy news sources for access to updates such as the Bloomberg Law article referenced above, an extensive collection of treatises available electronically, advice for finding relevant law review articles, and a section devoted to international privacy law resources such as the European Union’s comprehensive GDPR framework.

One of the resources highlighted in the Privacy Law Research Guide is the Bloomberg Privacy & Data Security Practice Center (available to the UNC Law community with a login), which currently provides access to a range of privacy law resources all in one place. Its key features include:

• A Practical Guidance section with forms and checklists for various areas of privacy law practice.
• News articles searchable by country, state, and topic.
• Privacy Profiles that seek to provide comprehensive treatment of all of the various privacy laws and the regulatory landscape in a particular state or nation.
• Links to “Portfolios” and treatises on a variety of privacy law topics.