Institute for Law & AI

What they do

SIRDA editorial

At a glance

Independent think tank researching the legal and institutional design challenges created by advanced AI, including law, compute, agencies, international institutions and the rule of law.

Its current place in the ecosystem spans AI governance and policy, rights, accountability, and democratic participation, and international coordination.

Current work and relevance

LawAI's own research includes work on international institutional design for AI. Senior Research Fellow Matthijs Maas, with José Jaime Villalobos, published a literature review surveying existing and proposed international institutional models relevant to AI governance, and Maas's 2025 book examines how the architecture of global AI governance might develop as the technology and the surrounding politics change.

LawAI's site also presents research it did not author itself. "A Thousand AI Constitutions," by Simon Goldstein and Peter Salib, argues against a single uniform document of AI values in favor of deliberate diversification across models; LawAI publishes this work, but it is not a LawAI institutional position. LawAI's site separately republishes "Who Writes the AI Constitution?", an article by Nicolas McMullan and Kevin Frazier first published in Lawfare in August 2026, which asks who currently drafts and controls the documents that set a model's values and behavior. The authors argue that this activity raises First Amendment concerns; that is their own position, not settled law, and it presumes a drafter operating inside a legal system where the First Amendment could apply, which will not hold for every developer or transnational body.

SIRDA has not yet completed dedicated research into Institute for Law & AI's current work beyond what is summarized above; this section is marked research-needed and will be revised as sourced findings become available.

SIRDA tracks Institute for Law & AI because it develops research, advocacy, evaluation, or institutional proposals that can become components of a broader governance architecture. Its work is compared against SIRDA's open questions on legitimacy, capture, rights, thresholds, enforcement, and international disagreement.

Relationship web

• Safeguarded AI: Institute for Law & AI participates in Safeguarded AI sociotechnical work

Sources

• Official or primary page: Institute for Law & AI
• Safeguarded AI funded teams and creators
• International AI Institutions: A Literature Review of Models, Examples, and Proposals
• Architectures of Global AI Governance: From Technological Change to Human Choice
• A Thousand AI Constitutions
• Who Writes the AI Constitution? (Lawfare)

Editorial note

This is SIRDA editorial content. Inclusion is an educational listing. It does not mean the subject has joined SIRDA, endorsed the founding inquiry, or approved this description. Factual corrections can be incorporated with a visible revision record, and substantive disagreements can be published as attributed responses.

Stated expertise

Expertise the organization has stated in its own published material, not a SIRDA ranking.

• International law & jurisdiction — Institute for Law & AI — official website
• International institutional design — Institute for Law & AI — official website
• AI law — Institute for Law & AI — official website
• International AI governance — Institute for Law & AI — official website
• Legal alignment — Institute for Law & AI — official website

Key work

No key work recorded.

Sources

• https://law-ai.org/
• https://www.aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/mathematics-for-safe-ai/safeguarded-ai/technical-areas
• https://law-ai.org/international-ai-institutions/
• https://law-ai.org/architectures-of-global-ai-governance/
• https://law-ai.org/a-thousand-ai-constitutions
• https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/who-writes-the-ai-constitution

Version history

House capitalization in displayed editorial summaries is standardized; stored historical versions are unchanged.