Florida State University Law professor creates U.S. Code iPhone application

TALLAHASSEE—Florida State University College of Law Assistant Professor Shawn J. Bayern has created an iPhone application that allows users to browse and search  the U.S. Code from their phones. The free application was recently released for download  on Apple’s App Store.  

“I released the app for free because, after all, the statutes themselves are free, and  I thought it would benefit more people that way. It was motivated ultimately by a civic  sense that these materials should be easy for anyone to find,” said Bayern. “It's perhaps a  little odd for me to have written a program to facilitate access to statutes, since the bulk  of my teaching and research is in the common law. I learned a bit about the structure of the U.S. Code myself just from writing the app.”  

“We are very proud of Shawn’s creative application,” said Dean Don Weidner. “He is one of several faculty members who bring strong scientific backgrounds to the law school.”  

Bayern joined the law school faculty in 2009. His research focuses on common  law issues, primarily in contracts, torts, and corporate law. Prior to his legal career, Bayern worked in computing research, served on groups responsible for developing  programming languages, and wrote several books and articles about computer  programming.