Market Discipline and the Algorithmic Rule of Law

14 November 2019

Photo: UCI

Automated systems that coerce preferred behaviors are being increasingly incorporated into legal decision-making, e.g. to determine criminal culpability or civil liability. Proposals for a "personalized law" further suggest that data profiles can be used to tailor the legal expectations to each individual. In his lecture Prof. Dr. Dan Burk will map out the intersection between the social construction of markets and the social construction of algorithms in the context of legal decision-making. He will argue that the algorithmic categorization can be expected to generate unexpected and perverse outcomes when used to determine legal status, and that we must begin to identify the contexts in which to curtail or restrict the algorithmic rule of law.