Do we trust Claude? A stress test of an AI model's constitution

International law scholar Yuval Shany examines Anthropic's 84-page Claude constitution released on January 21, 2026, noting that the document does not explicitly mention the concept of human rights, whereas the 2023 version cited the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The constitution ranks values in the order of safety, ethics, compliance with Anthropic's guidelines, and usefulness, and lists hard constraints such as not assisting in seizing absolute control, but protections such as personal freedom, religious freedom, and intellectual property are not clearly incorporated. The article compares two real-world cases: the U.S. Department of Defense listed Anthropic as a supply chain risk after Anthropic refused to allow Claude to be used for mass domestic surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons systems, and instead contracted with OpenAI; separately, reports say the U.S. military used Claude for target selection in the Iran war. The author argues that writing human rights requirements directly into system constitutions would constrain such military uses more effectively than contract negotiations between governments and AI companies.