Andrew Chin
Paul B. Eaton Distinguished Professor of Law
Adjunct Professor of Information and Library Science
J.D., Yale Law School (1998)
D.Phil., Mathematics (Computing), Oxford University (1991)
B.S., Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin (1987)
Andrew Chin joined the faculty in 2001 after a
previous career in theoretical computer science and combinatorial mathematics.
He writes and/or teaches in various legal fields that interface with modern
technology or call for quantitative methods and insights, including the laws of
intellectual property, antitrust, cyberspace, artificial intelligence, privacy,
democracy, and securities. His research methodologies range from data science
and the design and analysis of algorithms to constitutional theory and the
analytic philosophy of science and mathematics. In current work, he is exploring
how patent laws relate to the neurodiversity of the inventive community.
In recent years, Chin has partnered with Duke mathematicians in efforts to align
the quantitative evidence presented in support of partisan gerrymandering
challenges with rapidly shifting federal and state jurisprudence. His co-authors
provided instrumental expert testimony in the state court challenge that
resulted in the redrawing of North Carolina's congressional districts in 2020.
He was the author and attorney of record on amicus briefs filed on behalf of
election law, scientific evidence, and empirical legal scholars in Rucho v.
Common Cause and Gill v. Whitford.
Chin's scholarship on the calculation
of short-swing insider trading liability has helped numerous plaintiffs'
attorneys maximize recoveries for corporations and shareholders. In earlier
work, Chin authored a strategic disclosure of 11 million isolated DNA
oligonucleotides that has been cited as prior art in more than 30 issued U.S.
patents.
In his previous career teaching computer science, mathematics
and statistics at Oxford, King's College London, the University of Texas at
Austin, and Texas A&M University, Chin developed algorithms for fundamental
computational models that continue to be the most efficient ones available. He
developed and coined the first family of functions for locality-preserving
hashing, a technique that has since given rise to a vibrant field of research
with applications in machine learning, computer security, cloud computing and
bioinformatics.
Chin was president of the student government and later
taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of
Texas, where he organized a student movement that led to the creation of the
Center for Asian American Studies. He was notes development editor of the Yale
Law Journal as a student at Yale Law School, where he published a note and four
other law review articles. He clerked for Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the
United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and assisted Judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson and his law clerks in United States v. Microsoft
Corporation. Chin then practiced in the corporate and intellectual property
departments in the Washington, D.C., office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &
Flom, LLP. A 1987 Rhodes Scholar, Chin has chaired the University's nominating
committee for the Rhodes Scholarships since 2002, during which nineteen UNC
graduates have received the award.
