Research Interests
- Comparative Law
- Regulation of New Technologies
- Privacy and Data Protection
- Democratic Governance
Karen Eltis is a Full Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa and a Faculty member at its Centre for Law, Technology and Society. She is a past Affiliate with Princeton’s CITP (Center for Information Technology Policy). A former director of the uOttawa Human Rights Research and Education Centre, Karen Eltis specializes in the impact of new technologies on democratic governance, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence from a comparative perspective.
She served as Senior Advisor to the National Judicial Institute and has taught at Columbia Law School.
Fluent in French, English, Hebrew, Spanish and Romanian and proficient in German and Italian, Karen Eltis holds law degrees from McGill University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Columbia Law School (Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar). Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Ottawa, Karen was a litigation associate in New York City.
Her research on privacy and access to justice was cited three times by the Supreme Court of Canada (in the landmark case A.B. v. Bragg, 2012 and in Quebec (Attorney General) v. 9147-0732 Québec inc.2020 and most recently in Sherman Estate v. Donovan, 2021 SCC 25) and by other Canadian and foreign courts. Karen’s latest book is titled “Courts, Litigants and the Digital Age: Second Edition” (Irwin Law, 2016) supported by the CIRA grant. Her research on Artificial Intelligence and Expression is supported by the Foundation for Legal Research.