Enrique Schaerer

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Supreme Court of the United States

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Enrique Schaerer is a researcher working at the intersection of robotics, law, and ethics, with a particular focus on the complex questions of liability and moral responsibility that emerge as autonomous machines become increasingly integrated into everyday life. His foundational work explores how existing legal frameworks can be adapted — and where they may fall short — when addressing accidents involving semi-autonomous and autonomous robots. Most notably, Schaerer has advanced the provocative and intellectually generative framework of treating robots analogously to animals under the law, arguing that this comparison offers a practical and philosophically coherent basis for assigning responsibility in human-robot interactions. His 2009 paper, "Robots as Animals," laid the conceptual groundwork for this approach, while his 2010 follow-up extended the analysis to an international legal perspective, demonstrating the framework's broader applicability across different jurisdictions. Though his citation count remains modest, his contributions arrive at a critical moment in the field, offering scholars, legal practitioners, and policymakers a timely lens through which to anticipate the ethical and legal challenges posed by increasingly capable robotic systems.