Shawn J. Bayern is an American law professor. Before his legal career, he created several widely used computer-software systems and wrote several widely cited books on computer programming.
As a student, he developed a reputation for becoming critical to the university's information systems and having full access to those systems. He was the reference-implementation lead for JSTL and sat on the specification committees that developed popular languages including JavaServer Pages,
JAX-RPC, and JavaServer Faces.
He wrote early books on JSTL and JSP. He is also the creator of Time Cave, a "message-scheduling service," and in the early 2000s of a machine-learning system for playing rock-paper-scissors against human opponents.
After his computing career, Bayern went to Berkeley Law. There, he was editor-in-chief of the California Law Review and first in his class at graduation. He then worked as a law clerk for Harris Hartz of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also worked in the Office of the Solicitor General, on the Appellate Staff of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, in the chambers of a United States District Judge in California, and at Covington & Burling, a Washington law firm. In 2017, he was elected to the American Law Institute and serves as advisor to several Restatement projects.