Symposium 2027
Disciplining AI
Harvard Law School · April 2, 2027
Faculty Organizer: Mihailis E. Diamantis (University of Iowa)
Student Organizer: Jacob Levine (Symposium Editor, HJOLT Volume 40)
Call for Abstracts
As the world increasingly runs on AI, humanity has yet to discover how best to curb AI harms. Current legal policy and scholarship emphasize two strategies. The first imposes liability on people after their AI causes harm. The second regulates AI more directly, governing its development and deployment, but before harm occurs.
"Disciplining AI" will explore a third approach: directly intervening with AI after it causes harm.
Co-hosted by the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology and the University of Iowa's Innovation, Business, and Law Center, the symposium will convene in person on April 2, 2027, at Harvard Law School. Participants will consider whether it is possible and advisable to apply sanctions, or sanction-like responses, to AI.
We welcome all methodologies and fields of study. Submissions may engage constructively or critically with any step of the disciplinary process, from articulating liability standards, to detecting violations, to crafting interventions.
Subthemes
HJOLT is particularly interested in submissions that engage one of the following four subthemes:
1. Corporate Law and Personhood Must AI be a legal person for the law to discipline it? What sort of legal person would AI be? Could existing legal structures support AI legal personhood, for example by creating corporations that are co-extensive with an AI system?
2. Theories of Punishment What model of discipline is best suited to AI? Does AI have, or could it have, the sort of "motivation" deterrence requires? Is it possible to "rehabilitate" AI? Could targeted incapacitation prevent future offenses?
3. Civil Liberties What constitutional protections does AI discipline implicate: free speech, due process, takings? Would these safeguards protect AI itself, or those who develop and deploy it?
4. Implementation Which jurisdiction has the power or authority to discipline AI? Do we need an international framework? Within the United States, which agencies are relevant? What role could non-state actors play, including market forces, private coordination, or the technical research community?
Publication and Honorarium
Authors of accepted proposals will prepare essays of up to 8,000 words for presentation at the symposium and subsequent publication in Volume 41 of HJOLT. Each symposiast will receive an honorarium of $1,750 to help cover travel and accommodation.
Invited Symposiasts
Ryan Abbott (Surrey), Joanna Bryson (Hertie School), Pauline Kim (WashU), Frank Pasquale (Cornell), Alexander Sarch (Surrey), and Jordi Weinstock (Harvard).
How to Apply
Submit an abstract (300–500 words) and a CV by October 26, 2026 to:
Abstracts should clearly indicate which of the four subthemes, if any, they engage.