Daniel Chen

During his CASBS fellowship, Daniel L. Chen will advance his book project, Machine Justice, which explores how human–AI collaboration can improve fairness, consistency, and legitimacy in legal systems. Drawing on large-scale empirical studies, the project documents how ostensibly irrelevant factors—such as timing, context, and cognitive load—can influence judicial decisions and investigates how carefully designed AI tools can mitigate these effects while preserving legitimacy. The book develops a framework that situates AI within institutional design and the rule of law, rather than treating safety as solely a technical problem.

Chen’s work examines how norms, incentives, and information environments influence behavior in high-stakes settings ranging from courts to public administration. His recent research on attention, cognition, and “mind-body economics” explores how fatigue, distraction, and interoceptive signals shape judgment and well-being.

Chen is an economist and legal scholar whose work examines how institutions shape decision-making, fairness, and economic development. He is professor at the Toulouse School of Economics, Directeur de Recherche at CNRS, and was a Hoover National Fellow at Stanford University. Chen received his BA and MS from Harvard University, his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his JD from Harvard Law School.