LAWTOMATION

This line of the Lawtomation project seeks to explore the possibilities and challenges raised by the automation of law in the constitutional and administrative context.

Undoubtedly, the automation of administrative procedures can bring about important benefits, minimizing administrative errors while speeding up procedures and reducing their costs. From this perspective, the automation of administrative decision-making can serve one of the fundamental goals of administrative law, which is to ensure that public authorities can effectively fulfil their functions.

At the same time, the automation of administrative procedures raises important questions from the perspective of the values served by administrative law: due process, citizen participation, transparency, and accountability. Thus, the question that arises is how to accommodate the automation of the administrative state with the rule of law and with the values that are at the core of the administrative law enterprise. In addition, new models and applications based on automation challenge a number of well-established procedural guarantees and fundamental rights, such as due process in the decision-making process, the lack of bias, and the protection of privacy.

Automated decision systems on the other hand, do not necessarily lead to fair outcomes, while they are equally problematic from a procedural point of view. While the administration feeds the algorithm with data, and then the latter produces decisions, how algorithms operate is opaque. Because of this lack of transparency, automated systems allow for less scrutiny, as compared to human decision-making. Such opacity means that citizens do not have access and cannot form knowledge on how decisions are reached, thus limiting the possibility to hold the administration accountable for its actions and decisions.