Research filing cabinet

Agenda drawers & connective tissue

Skeuomorphic tabs nod to a Tufte-style cabinet: thin rules, generous margins, and careful annotations. Each drawer shows where a paper or poster lives today and the notes show how drafts stack into the next thing.

Legal reasoning systems

Questions about how legal rules are encoded, contested, and explained by computational systems. These drawers hold the doctrinal framing that guides technical experiments.

Paper2024

Tracing AI-related discretionary spending (FAccT 2024)

Empirical paper quantifying AI-related discretionary spending and proposing oversight levers that map agency obligations back to statute.

PublishedBuilds on Comments on the OMB draft AI guidance, Taken for granted: Where's the oversight of AI and federal funding?Read
Poster2023

Rulewriter: translating frontline observations into draft doctrine

Design pattern for capturing situated observations from civil servants and shaping them into pre-structured rules that legal teams can adopt.

In progressBuilds on Bureaucratic Backchannel posterRead
Research note2023

Comments on the OMB draft AI guidance

Public comments urging OMB to surface "AI-related discretionary spending" in legal requirements for agencies and to publish oversight playbooks.

PublishedBuilds on Taken for granted: Where's the oversight of AI and federal funding?Read
Law on the ground

Material about implementation: the prototypes, posters, and memos that stress-test how legal reasoning shows up in agencies and vendor contracts.

Policy memo2024

Blank Checks for Black Boxes

Policy memo for FAS that argues for clearer funding visibility, showing how agencies can track AI spending and enforcement obligations.

PublishedBuilds on Tracing AI-related discretionary spending (FAccT 2024), Taken for granted: Where's the oversight of AI and federal funding?Read
Poster2023

Bureaucratic Backchannel poster

Concept poster proposing safe internal routes for frontline staff to flag AI issues without retaliation, feeding ground truth into governance loops.

DraftRead
Research note2023

Taken for granted: Where's the oversight of AI and federal funding?

Blog post establishing the problem statement and outlining why federal grantmaking data is critical for locating AI deployments.

PublishedRead
Research infrastructure

Tools and scaffolding that keep the research stream moving-ways to stay on top of CFPs, literature, and data so future drawers are prepped.

Tool2024

CFP Monitor

Automated pipeline that scrapes, classifies, and publishes calls for papers across technology law venues, exporting to shared calendars.

PublishedRead
Research note2024

Agenda index cards

Lightweight card system to capture half-baked research prompts so they can be filed next to mature outputs in the cabinet.

In progressBuilds on CFP Monitor

Research programs

Threads stitch together works across drawers so it is easy to see how experimental prototypes, legal analyses, and policy outputs reinforce one another. Each milestone links directly back to a drawer entry.

Governing AI-related spending

Shows how the initial blog framing on oversight turns into formal guidance requests and a peer-reviewed empirical base.

  • Taken for granted: Where's the oversight of AI and federal funding? — Problem statement and agenda-setting languageResearch note · 2023
  • Comments on the OMB draft AI guidance — Legal hooks for enforcing disclosureResearch note · 2023
  • Tracing AI-related discretionary spending (FAccT 2024) — Empirical backbone for those hooksPaper · 2024
  • Blank Checks for Black Boxes — Policy packaging for agencies and CongressPolicy memo · 2024

Feedback loops inside agencies

Tracks how prototypes to surface frontline knowledge evolved from posters into reusable templates for legal teams.

  • Bureaucratic Backchannel poster — Initial prototype for safe reporting channelsPoster · 2023
  • Rulewriter: translating frontline observations into draft doctrine — Codifying observations into transferable doctrinePoster · 2023

Research operations & tooling

Captures the infrastructure that keeps adjacent agendas moving and makes new drawers cheap to spin up.

  • CFP Monitor — Live feed of publication venues to pace outputsTool · 2024
  • Agenda index cards — System to triage ideas into future drawersResearch note · 2024