I have been approached by citizens from a war-torn, authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic nation to prepare a forward-looking constitution in hopes that these citizens may establish a break-away nation-state founded on principles of democracy, pluralism, and secular liberalism.

In 1950, Alan Turing asked the world whether machines could think. While the question ultimately remained unanswered, Turing expressed his confident belief that, by the year 2000, society would have grown so accustomed to technology that the idea of machines being able to think would be undisputed. Although Turing’s predicted timeline might be a bit off, technology did become an integral part of everyday life. Towards the last few decades of the 20th century, technological advancement became so extensive that it reshaped society and labeled the current historical period as the Digital Age. This project will explore how technological advances could/should shape the laws of a newly founded nation-state (or whatever organizing systems might supplant the nation-state). Specifically, this project focuses on how lawmakers could harness the knowledge society has gained of technology and its possible trajectories in the Digital Age to develop a digitally aware body of laws that considers the benefits and dangers of technological advances. This project will explore both procedural and substantive rights to create a governance and societal framework that might best serve humanity and evolve with changing technologies and circumstances..

The descriptions of current and past projects of CodeX non-residential fellows are provided to illustrate the kind of work our non-residential fellows are carrying out. These projects are listed here for informational purposes only and are not endorsed by CodeX, Stanford Law School, or Stanford University.