Restoring Ethical and Constitutional Commitments
Artificial intelligence policy in the United States rests on unstable legal and ethical foundations. Between 2019 and 2025, three presidential administrations issued twelve executive orders on AI. In the absence of comprehensive legislation, executive action became one of the primary means by which the United States defined the ethical and legal boundaries of artificial intelligence.
Dr. Nathan C. Walker, Founder of the AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers University, provides the first sustained legal and ethical analysis applying an Ethics Mapping methodology to these twelve executive orders. He identifies patterns of consensus, redefinition, and conflict across administrations, revealing a striking paradox. The first two presidents, from competing political parties, shared a relative consensus on bipartisan AI principles: accountability, accuracy, beneficence, justice, privacy, safety and security, and trust. Then, in 2025, with the addition of eight more executive orders, the legal and political landscape shifted, as these principles were omitted, redefined, or replaced.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government continued to rely on an outdated legal definition of artificial intelligence that predates the rise of generative AI and has been inconsistently applied across federal agencies and executive orders. Together, these shifting ethical commitments and fragmented legal definitions have produced a volatile and contested policy landscape, particularly as federal and state governments increasingly compete for legal authority.
Dr. Walker addresses this urgent AI governance problem through an empirical study of how ethical commitments in U.S. law reveal a fragmented system of governance. Drawing on a systematic analysis of executive action, he introduces a nonpartisan legal framework to inform federal and state law as well as corporate governance. Grounded in a Dignity by Design approach, the book provides a clear path for restoring ethical and constitutional commitments in one of the most consequential technological developments of our time.