Andrew McLaughlin is a Berkman Center Fellow whose work focuses on the law, politics and economics of Internet infrastructure and interconnection in developing countries.

Andrew is leading a Berkman Center project to support the deployment of Internet exchange points (IXPs) in Africa, India, and Central Asia. The project is a pragmatic effort to advise governments, regulators, ISPs, networking professionals, and others on legal/regulatory frameworks that will promote, rather than obstruct, the creation of neutral Internet exchange point facilities. IXPs enable in-country routing of Internet traffic, and are widely considered essential elements of Internet infrastructure for developing nations. In that capacity, Andrew is one of the organizers of the 2002 East Africa Internet Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, which will feature technical workshops and a plenary session on IXPs.

From 1999-2002, Andrew helped to launch the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), serving at various times as Vice President, Chief Policy Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Senior Adviser. He continues to act as an adviser to ICANN on policy matters and institutional relationships.

Andrew was first named a fellow of the Berkman Center in 1998, working on issues of Internet technical administration and self-governance, and on the application of constitutional law doctrines to cyberspace. In particular, he worked to develop an online mechanism to facilitate democratic consultation in cyberspace by adapting the model of Deliberative Polling to the Internet. In 1999, Andrew taught The Law of Cyberspace with Jonathan Zittrain.

In 2000, Time named Andrew one of its Digital Dozen. In 2001, he was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.

After graduating from the Harvard Law School in 1994, McLaughlin clerked for Judge Gerald W. Heaney of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. From 1995-97, he worked as an associate at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C., where he was a member of the team that successfully litigated the challenge to the Communications Decency Act, culminating in the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Reno v. ACLU, 117 S.Ct. 2329 (1997). From 1997-98, he served as Counsel to Congressman Henry Waxman of Los Angeles, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives’ campaign finance investigation.

A native of Minnesota, McLaughlin graduated from Yale University in 1991 with a B.A. in history. As a law student, he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

A number of Andrew's ICANN-related presentations are posted here.