Biography
Anne Gardner received her bachelor’s and law degrees from Stanford University. After a year’s clerkship on the California Supreme Court, she spent the 1960s in Washington, D.C., working for a presidential commission, a Senate subcommittee, and then the newly established National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1970 she moved (because of her husband’s job) to DeKalb, Illinois. There, at Northern Illinois University, she had the opportunity to explore long-standing interests in computing, especially artificial intelligence, and philosophy of law. She earned an M.S. in computer science and served as an instructor at NIU until returning to Stanford in 1976 to pursue a Ph.D. Her dissertation, An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Legal Reasoning, was published in revised form by MIT Press in 1987.
Anne then agreed to help with a Supreme Court case in which a Stanford law professor was serving as special master. This turned out to be a long-term project, ending in 1997 with a Supreme Court decision, United States v. Alaska, 521 U.S. 1, that mostly adopted the recommendations in the special master’s 500-page report.
Anne’s other major activity has been with the International Conference on AI and Law (ICAIL), held biennially since 1987, and its organizing body, the International Association for AI and Law (IAAIL). She has served as program chair (Bologna, 2005), conference chair (Stanford, 2007), secretary-treasurer (2008-2019), and is now an honorary member of the IAAIL executive committee.
