Law Commons^™

Technological Due Process, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Distinct and complementary procedures for adjudications and rulemaking lie at the heart of twentieth-century administrative law. Due process required agencies to provide individuals notice and an opportunity to be heard. Agencies could foreclose policy issues that individuals might otherwise raise in adjudications through public rulemaking. One system allowed focused advocacy; the other featured broad participation. Each procedural regime compensated for the normative limits of the other. Both depended on clear statements of reason.

The dichotomy between these procedural regimes has become outmoded. This century’s automated decision-making systems collapse individual adjudications into rulemaking while adhering to the procedural safeguards of neither. …