Rule by Automation: How Automated Decision Systems Promote Freedom and Equality

2022 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Sparks ◽  
Athmeya Jayaram
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Automated Systems ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Decision Systems ◽  
Relational Theories ◽  
Valuable Relationships ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
What Matters

Abstract Using automated systems to avoid the need for human discretion in government contexts – a scenario we call ‘rule by automation’ – can help us achieve the ideal of a free and equal society. Drawing on relational theories of freedom and equality, we explain how rule by automation is a more complete realization of the rule of law and why thinkers in these traditions have strong reasons to support it. Relational theories are based on the absence of human domination and hierarchy, which automation helps us achieve. Nevertheless, there is another understanding of relational theories where what matters is the presence of valuable relationships with those in power. Exploring this further might help us see when and why we should accept human discretion.

The Rule of Law: The New Leviathan?

1999 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olufemi Taiwo
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Global Level ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Ordering ◽  
Soviet Communism ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
The Ideal

These are the best of times for the Rule of Law. In all parts of the world, states, governments, and individuals, have found in the rule of law, at various times, a rallying cry, a principle of social ordering that promises the dawn of a just society that its supporters in Euro-American democracies claim to be its crowning glory, or a set of practices that is a sine qua non of a good society. The pursuit of the ideal is nothing new: after all, even those states where it was observed more often in its breach always paid lip service to it. And the defunct socialist countries of Eastern Europe, while they existed, could not escape its lure even as they sought to give it a different nomenclature—socialist legality. The movement towards the rule of law has accelerated after the collapse of Soviet communism and its foster progeny in different parts of the world. Given the present momentum towards the rule of law and the widespread enthusiasm with which it is being embraced and pursued at the global level, some would consider it somewhat churlish for anyone to inject any note of doubt or caution. This is more so when such a note emanates from Marxist quarters. But that is precisely what I wish to do in this essay. Although I do not intend to rain on the rule of law’s entire parade, I surely propose to rain on a segment of it: the Marxist float. I propose to look at the issue within the context of the Marxist politico-philosophical tradition.

scholarly journals Breaking Up the Unity of the World: Peter Fitzpatrick’s Conception of Responsive Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 174387212097533
Author(s):  
Johan van der Walt
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Short Article ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
The Ideal

This short article on Peter Fitzpatrick’s conception of “responsive law” analyzes the ambiguous temporality that Fitzpatrick discerned in modern law. On the one hand, law makes the claim of being fully present and therefore already and completely contained in itself. This aspect of law reflects the law’s claim to “immanence,” that is, its claim of always being able to rely strictly on its own operational terms without having to take recourse to any consideration not already contained within itself. It is this aspect of law that renders the ideal of the “rule of law” feasible. On the other hand, the law’s claim to doing justice to every unique and therefore every new case also demands that it takes leave of that which is already settled within it. This aspect of law can be called its “imminence.” The imminence of the law concerns the reality that law always finds itself on the threshold of that which has not yet been said and must still be said. The article shows how Fitzpatrick relied on Freud’s concept of the totem to explain the “wondrous” unity of its immanence and imminence.

Global Legal Pluralism and the Rule of Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
David Lefkowitz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Regulatory Regimes ◽  
Legal Subjects ◽  
The Ideal

A vibrant debate has recently emerged among legal theorists regarding the desirability of legal pluralism: the existence of distinct regulatory regimes that make overlapping claims to authority. While Monists maintain that we should strive to forge a unitary legal order, Normative Legal Pluralists favour an approach that seeks to manage legal plurality without eliminating it. This chapter critically evaluates a common argument Monists level against Normative Legal Pluralism, namely that it conflicts with fidelity to the ideal of the rule of law.Advocates of Normative Legal Pluralism employ three strategies to respond to their rule-of-law critics. First, they attempt to show that a plural legal order fares no worse than a unitary one when measured against the standard of providing legal subjects with certainty and predictability. Second, they argue that increases in tolerance, or respect for the exercise of communal and individual autonomy, warrant whatever diminution in the rule of law Normative Legal Pluralism produces. Finally, they invoke an account of law’s distinctive normativity informed by sociolegal jurisprudence and constructivist political theory to disarm rule of law objections to normative legal pluralism, either by contesting the premises on which they rest or by providing reasons to conclude that the critics’ worries are seriously overdrawn. While the first two strategies fail, the critics underestimate or simply fail to notice Normative Legal Pluralists’ ability to leverage their conception of law’s legitimacy to address rule of law concerns.

Rule of law. Argomenti di una teoria (giuridica) istituzionale

2009 ◽  
pp. 27-66
Author(s):  
Gianluigi Palombella
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
Normative Standard ◽  
Institutional Model ◽  
The Ideal

- This article aims to offer an interpretation of the potential of the Rule of Law in the present day. By conducting an historical reconstruction and comparative analysis, among other things, the notion of the Rule of Law is explained in terms of a specific normative standard, i.e. of an ideal objective, an institutional model against which existing laws can be compared critically. The normative significance is expressed here in terms of the concepts of institutional balance, not of the dominance and duality of law. Celebrated extensively in the more famous national constitutions and international charters, the ideal of the Rule of Law is defined here asa) coherent with the historical constants through which its institutional meaning comes to different forms of expression,b) extendible to the transformations of contemporary legal institutions, also beyond the state, andc) conceptually sustainable in theoretical terms, where it is expressed so as to avoid falling into the partly connected, though different, controversies about morality or about the conditions under which law is valid.

Some Rule-of-Law Anxieties about Strict Liability in Private Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
John Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Strict Liability ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Fault Liability

Strict liability plays a significant role in many legal systems, in both criminal and private law. Its occasional use attracts a weary toleration from legal thinkers, but few stand up for it with enthusiasm, and few argue for its extension. Injustice challenges to strict liability take more than one form. This chapter focuses on those that see the injustice of strict liability as bound up with a failure, on the law’s part, to conform to the ideal of the rule of law. These challenges can be contrasted with those that complain of the injustice of attaching liability to morally blameless actions. Although strict liability is no-fault liability in a special lawyers’ sense of ‘fault’, it also extends in the process to many who are not at fault in the ordinary moral sense of ‘fault’, i.e. many whose actions are morally blameless.

Self-Defense and the Rule of Law

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Schachter
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
International Level ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Legal Justification ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Legal Right

Self-defense on the international level is generally regarded, at least by international lawyers, as a legal right defined and legitimated by international law. Governments, by and large, appear to agree. When they have used force, they have nearly always claimed self-defense as their legal justification. Governments disputing that claim have usually asserted that the legal conditions of self-defense were not met in the particular case. However, despite the apparent agreement that self-defense is governed by law, the meaning and validity of that proposition remain open to question. There are some who challenge the basic idea that the security of a state—its self-preservation—can and should be subjected to international law. Others question whether under present conditions the ideal of a rule of law can be applied on the international level to national security decisions. My aim in this essay is to explore some aspects of the problem raised by these challenges to the applicability of international law to claims of self-defense. It is not my intention, I should add, to consider specific interpretations of self-defense.

THE POLITICAL FRONTIERS OF EUROPE AS A CIVIL SOCIETY: J. HABERMAS’ REJECTION OF A EUROPEAN VOLK AND M. FOUCAULT'S BALANCE OF POWER AS PROTECTIONS AGAINST EUROPEAN NATION‐STATE

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Machiel Karskens
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
European Institutions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Ideal

With the help of J. Habermas and M. Foucault, it is argued that the idea of Europe is, first of all, the ideal of an unlimited civil society. Human rights, the rule of law and the legal European institutions are its political backbone. The European Union itself is somehow the realization of this ideal conception of a borderless, unlimited society. It is argued that the European Union in this respect is a heterotopia within the bordered and sovereign member states themselves. Seen from the outside, however, and in the world of geopolitics, Europe is a political power with closed borders and excluding frontiers. In this respect the European Union is a continuation of the old European Balance of Power.

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