About The Anthropic Institute
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation building some of the world's most powerful AI systems. The Anthropic Institute is a new externally-facing organization within Anthropic whose purpose is to give the world new information about how the AI systems we build are affecting the economy, democratic institutions, and the people and organizations that interact with our systems.
The Institute sits inside a frontier lab, with access to information only AI developers possess. That position is what makes our work different. We don't just study AI from the outside. We study it from within.
About the role
Anthropic has done pioneering work examining the economic impacts of AI. The AI & Rule of Law team takes an analogous approach to a different question: how will AI affect our constitutional democratic institutions?
Increasingly powerful AI systems will put pressure on societal functions at every level — the courts, legislatures, electoral systems, oversight bodies, and the legal frameworks that hold democratic governance together. Our team exists to ask hard questions about those vulnerabilities, and to seek out strategies for protecting democratic freedoms — in the short and long term, through both technical and policy levers.
This is early, high-stakes research. The team is small, the problems are genuinely unsolved, and the work will matter.
Key responsibilities
Projects on this team are illustrative rather than fixed — we expect the research agenda to evolve as both AI capabilities and institutional pressures change. Current and expected focus areas include:
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AI safety evaluations with a legal alignment lens — developing frameworks to assess whether frontier AI systems behave consistently with constitutional norms, due process, and rule-of-law principles
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Institutional vulnerability analysis — identifying where AI creates novel pressure points in democratic governance, and proposing both policy and technical mitigations
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Novel legal issues in frontier AI — mapping the unsettled legal terrain created by capable AI systems, including questions of liability, agency, and institutional authority
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Applications that bolster democratic processes — developing or identifying ways AI could strengthen civic participation, legislative capacity, or judicial function
You will use Claude aggressively and creatively throughout this work — as a research tool, a thought partner, and a subject of inquiry.
Minimum qualifications
We are looking for someone with deep expertise in both AI and at least one of: law, government, political science, or public policy. The ideal candidate understands the technical landscape well enough to reason about AI capabilities and risks, and understands democratic institutions well enough to see where those risks become structural threats.
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A primary degree in law, political science, or a closely related field at the Ph.D. level or equivalent — OR extensive government experience at a leadership level
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Demonstrated ability to produce rigorous, public-facing work — scholarship, policy analysis, government output, or a published body of writing
Preferred qualifications
- At least five years of relevant experience in academia, industry, or government
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Experience at the intersection of legal or political theory and emerging technology
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A track record of working across disciplines — a legal scholar who has engaged seriously with AI, or a policy official who has worked on technology governance
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Comfort operating with significant autonomy in an environment where the problems are new and the playbook is still being written
