Sarath Sanga

My current work is about institutions, and in particular about why they earn trust and authority. With Yehonatan Givati I've developed a theory of trust in institutions. An institution earns trust by committing to a mandate, and loses it as growing influence pulls it toward aims outside that mandate. I served on the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education, which asked what universities owe the public and where they have fallen short. I am asking the same question of AI firms, how they should be governed, and who answers when AI causes harm. With Gabriel Rauterberg I've written on limited liability for AI. In a current project I develop deliberative assemblies as a governance mechanism for AI firms.

My main research interests are in contracts and corporate governance. This concerns how people and organizations structure their relationships and set their own rules. I've shown how the design of corporate altering rules shifts power and control of corporations, how venture-capital contracts solve (or exacerbate) fiduciary conflicts in startups, why Delaware and New York dominate the market for corporate and contract law through network effects, and how firms deliberately leave contracts incomplete.

I also work on AI and the legal profession. Most recently I conducted a blind evaluation in which law professors preferred AI answers to their peers' answers. I co-founded SCALES, a project harnessing AI to make federal court records freely accessible. Prior to joining Yale, I held permanent and visiting positions at Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Columbia, and the University of California, Berkeley.