Call for Papers—Fifth Annual Cybersecurity Law and Policy Scholars Conference

The fifth annual Cybersecurity Law and Policy Scholars Conference (CLPSC) will take place at the Loyola University Chicago Law School in Chicago, IL, on April 17-18, 2026. The conference will be hybrid, with in-person participation preferred.

The paper workshops will be modeled after the Privacy Law Scholars Conference. Each paper will be assigned a discussant, who will introduce the paper and provide comments. This will be followed by comments from the audience. The conference only provides an opportunity to workshop the papers; the conference will not publish papers or other proceedings. We expect accepted authors to attend the entire conference and read at least one paper for each scheduled session.

Submission and Registration Instructions

To present a work in progress for discussion, please submit an abstract (maximum 1000 words) by Feb. 15 at https://www.clpsc.org. Abstracts should describe a working thesis, must situate the paper within cybersecurity scholarship, and may also include a description of research methodology. If you have a full draft of your paper ready and would like to submit it with the abstract by Feb. 15 you are welcome to do so, but this is not required. The program committee will notify all applicants of its decisions by Mar. 15 or soon thereafter. Substantially complete drafts of papers for circulation to conference participants are due by April 1. Drafts must not be published at the time of presentation but may be accepted with a journal, so long as an opportunity for substantial edits is still possible. Because this is a competitive selection conference, we reserve the right to remove authors from the schedule in the event drafts are not substantially complete or have been published to offer another author the opportunity to present.

Travel Expenses

We are unable to support travel expenses this year. Although our conference will be in person, and we prefer in-person attendance, we will endeavor to accommodate virtual presentations if travel is not possible for attendees. Please indicate if you prefer virtual participation when you submit your abstract.

Loyola University Chicago’s School of Law is on Loyola’s Water Tower, city campus in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago, IL. It is near Michigan Avenue in a popular tourist area. We recommend flying into Chicago O’Hare and taking the Blue Line train to the Lake Avenue Station, then transferring to the Red Line or taking a rideshare or taxi to the School of Law. Chicago’s public transit infrastructure is very good and relatively inexpensive.

Conference Background

Recent years have seen an increase in scholarship focused on cybersecurity law and policy. This conference recognizes the need for a dedicated forum for interdisciplinary scholars in the growing field to workshop papers, discuss research ideas, and share pedagogical approaches. We hope that the conference will include participants from a range of academic disciplines, including law, public policy, computer science, political science, economics, and international relations.

Issue areas that would be suitable for workshop papers include (but are not limited to):

• Cybersecurity regulation

• Incident response procedures and policies

• Cybersecurity and artificial intelligence

• Computer crime law

• Data breach and other cybersecurity litigation

• Electronic government surveillance

• Law of armed conflict as applied to cyber

• Information sharing and public-private partnerships

• Cyber espionage

• Cybersecurity standards

• Cybersecurity governance models

• International standardization or comparative analyses of cybersecurity law

If you have any questions about the submission process or potential topics, or if you are not submitting a paper but would like to attend the conference as a paper discussant or participant, please email conference@clpsc.org.

Sincerely,

CLPSC Organizing Committee

Bryan Choi

Gus Hurwitz

Jeff Kosseff

Ido Sivan-Sevilla

Charlotte Tschider

Josephine Wolff