Americans overwhelming oppose the AI data center buildout. Their retirement accounts are funding it anyway.

A new board of directors and executive committee, an upcoming conference, a junior faculty forum, new member-led initiatives: much is afoot in the ALPE.

In thinking about how to regulate AI as a public utility, there are two big questions: which layers of the AI stack warrant regulation, and which tools of public utility law are best suited to each layer?

If capitalism is a legal regime above all else, then legal reform is not only necessary but sufficient in order to achieve democratic self-governance, ecological sustainability, and equality. As the collapse of the WTO and the rise of China suggest, however, law alone does not decide who holds economic power.

When new constitutional orders came about in the 18th and 19th centuries, they left intact the private legal order that they inherited from feudalism, entrenching property rights and contracts as bulwarks against economic democracy. Reforming this system will require placing private law on a normative foundation that is compatible with democratic self-ordering.

Understanding law’s role in producing the imperatives of capitalism and the relative power of those who occupy different roles in production allows us to identify reforms capable of transforming the structure of those relations.