Introducing the Legal Priorities Project

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2020·EA Forum·forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PvBLDPkqKvdHQkKPn/intro...

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jonasschuett

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Announcement post for the Legal Priorities Project, an EA-aligned organization bridging legal scholarship with existential risk reduction, relevant to AI governance and policy researchers looking at institutional and legal levers for safety.

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Cause prioritizationPhilosophyPolicyLawImproving institutional decision-makingMoral circle expansion

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Summary

This post announces the Legal Priorities Project, an organization focused on identifying and addressing high-priority legal research questions relevant to existential risk reduction and other major challenges facing humanity. It outlines the project's mission to apply rigorous legal analysis to issues such as AI governance, biosecurity, and other areas where legal frameworks may significantly affect long-term outcomes.

Key Points

•The Legal Priorities Project aims to identify legal research questions that could have outsized positive impact on humanity's long-term future.
•The project focuses on areas like AI governance, biosecurity, and international law where legal frameworks intersect with existential and global catastrophic risks.
•It seeks to build a field of law focused on existential risk reduction, drawing on EA principles to prioritize high-impact legal work.
•The organization plans to produce research, engage with policymakers, and cultivate talent in legally-focused longtermist and EA work.
•It represents an effort to complement technical AI safety and policy work with rigorous legal scholarship and advocacy.

2 FactBase facts citing this source

Entity	Property	Value	As Of
Legal Priorities Project	Founded Date	Aug 2020	—
Legal Priorities Project	Founded By	Christoph Winter	—

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# Introducing the Legal Priorities Project
By jonasschuett
Published: 2020-08-30
We’re excited to introduce a new EA organization: the [Legal Priorities Project](https://www.legalpriorities.org/).

**About us**
============

The Legal Priorities Project is an independent, global research project founded by researchers from Harvard University. Our mission is to conduct legal research that tackles the world’s most pressing problems. This currently leads us to focus on the protection of future generations.

The project is led by [Christoph Winter](https://www.legalpriorities.org/team/christoph-winter.html) (ITAM/Harvard); the other founding team members are [Cullen O’Keefe](https://www.legalpriorities.org/team/cullen-okeefe.html) (OpenAI/GovAI), [Eric Martínez](https://www.legalpriorities.org/team/eric-martinez.html) (MIT), and [Jonas Schuett](https://www.legalpriorities.org/team/jonas-schuett.html) (Goethe University Frankfurt). For more information about our team, [visit our website](https://www.legalpriorities.org/about.html).

The idea was born at the EA group at Harvard Law School in Fall 2018. Since then, we raised two rounds of funding from [Ben Delo](https://www.effectivegiving.org/ben-delo) at the advice of [Effective Giving](https://www.effectivegiving.org/), built a highly motivated and mission-aligned core team, registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, hosted a [seminar at Harvard Law School](https://hls.harvard.edu/event/legal-priorities-research-seminar-3/), and organized our first summer research fellowship. Besides that, we worked on our [research agenda](https://www.legalpriorities.org/research.html#research-agenda) and a number of other [research projects](https://www.legalpriorities.org/research.html#research-projects).

We’re currently assessing the desirability and feasibility of having a formal affiliation with a university. We consider founding a center or institute at a leading law school in the US or UK within the coming 2 years.

![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/LtHSPXkF7_UcQhhnwbblcBeYU6VAmQbrTo3xb51KZuDtt2j0ByGs8nYATdmdBrCzAkB9B7C60hA32J100c-p_b1u_fFyv0vGgssNTCHkTavKi4SkMPxFleOGxtH-FCEAwA6U70JQ)

**Our research**
================

We aim to establish “legal priorities research” as a new research field. At the meta-level, we determine which problems legal scholars should work on in order to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. At the object-level, we conduct legal research on the identified problems.

Our approach to legal priorities research is influenced by the longtermism paradigm. Consequently, we are currently focusing on the following [cause areas](https://www.legalpriorities.org/research.html#research-focus): (1) improving the governance of advanced artificial intelligence, (2) mitigating risks from synthetic biology, (3) mitigating extreme risks from climate change, and (4) improving institutional design and decision-making.

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_410CDuRoehoW_XEge68uAPShIXbtx1eMD6LoHsgbPMt3

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