Henrik D. Kugelberg

An increasing number of complex and important decisions are now being made with the aid of opaque algorithms. This has led to calls from both theorists and legislators for the implementation of a right to an explanation for algorithmic decisions. In this paper, we argue that, in most cases and for most kinds of explanations, there is no such right. After differentiating a number of different things that might be meant by a ‘right to an explanation,’ we argue that, for the most plausible and popular versions (a right to an explanation for a specific bureaucratic decision, a right to an explanation grounded in public reason considerations, or a right to a higher-level explanation of an entire system of automated decision-making), such a right is either superfluous, impossible to obtain, or not the best way to secure the relevant normative goods. We also argue that proponents of a right to an explanation carve off certain kinds of automated decisions as requiring more justification than others in similar areas of social (and natural) science policy, a demarcation we argue is unjustified. While there will be some cases where an explanation is the only thing that can secure an important normative good (e.g. when an explanation is the only thing that would catch an unjustified individual decision), we argue these cases are too rare and scattered to ground something as weighty as a right to an explanation.

People often fail to comply with the demands of morality. Partial compliance theory takes this noncompliance or its possibility into account in the formulation of moral requirements for people to comply with, or in the evaluation of people’s actions against those requirements. This chapter critically engages with recent work on partial compliance theory. It examines the relationship between noncompliance and injustice, assesses different ways of doing partial compliance theory, sketches the relationship between partial compliance theory and other central methodological debates in moral and political philosophy, and considers whether it is reasonable to issue moral requirements without examining what would happen if everyone did their part.

Public reason liberalism demands that political decisions be publicly justified to the citizens who are subjected to them. Much recent literature emphasises the differences between the two main interpretations of this requirement, justificatory and political liberalism. In this paper, I show that both views share structural democratic deficits. They fail to guarantee political autonomy, the expressive quality of law, and the justification to citizens, because they allow collective decisions made by incompletely theorised agreements. I argue that the result can only be avoided by changing public reason’s role in collective decision-making. Instead of incompletely theorised agreements, we should demand agreement both on the public reasons themselves and on the other premises that justify political decisions. In this way, it is always possible to point to a procedure-independent reason that justifies democratic decisions, and the reasoning of the state is public and contestable. Finally, I explain how this, in turn, implies that only political liberalism can be rescued—by accepting what I will call strong political liberalism. Modifying justificatory liberalism in the necessary way will inevitably open the door to an objectionable form of perfectionism.

Social norms regulating carework and social reproduction tend to be inegalitarian. At the same time, such norms often play a crucial role when we plan our lives. How can we criticise objectionable practices while ensuring that people can organise their lives around meaningful and predictable rules? Gerald Gaus argues that only ‘publicly justified’ rules, rules that everyone would prefer over ‘blameless liberty,’ should be followed. In this paper, we uncover the inegalitarian implications of this feature of Gaus's framework. We show that because a society without clear social norms for how social reproduction and care work ought to be organised would be so unattractive, inegalitarian rules would pass Gaus's test. They would pass this test since they would nevertheless be better than ‘blameless liberty.’ Those who are disproportionately burdened by a rule are faced with the daunting task of showing that they would be better off under no rule, instead of merely having to show that they would be better off with a different rule.

Kevin Vallier has recently argued that the ideals of public justification and public deliberation should be separated. The link between the two, Vallier suggests, has been assumed without being properly defended. Once examined, the connection falls apart. In this paper, I argue that there is, in fact, a clear and convincing story available for why the two ideals should be treated as mutually reinforcing. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, I argue that the deliberative behaviour of citizens can have a clear and positive impact on the behaviour and policy choices of public officials.

Most political liberals argue that only rules, policies and institutions that are part of society’s basic structure need to be justified with so-called public reasons. Laws enacted outside this set are legitimate if and when public reasons can justify the procedure that selects them. I argue that this view is susceptible to known problems from social choice theory. However, there are resources within political liberalism that could address them. If the scope of public reason is extended beyond the basic structure it could order people’s preferences in a way that circumvents the identified issues.

Many democratic theorists hold that when a decision is collectively made in the right kind of way, in accordance with the right procedure, it is permissible to enforce it. They deny that there are further requirements on the type of reasons that can permissibly be used to justify laws and policies. In this paper, I argue that democratic theorists are mistaken about this. So-called public reason requirements follow from commitments that most of them already hold. Drawing on the democratic ideal of civic equality, I show that it can successfully explain why political decision-making must have the right sort of procedure-independent justification. However, contra standard accounts of public reason, I argue that laws and policies need to be justified with convergence accessible, not shared, reasons. Public reasons are those that are accessible in light of evaluative standards shared by all, or in light of every citizen’s private evaluative standards. Since this will make the set of public reasons wider, it makes the theory more palatable to sceptics while retaining the framework’s justificatory potential.

A common objection to political liberalism is that since reasonable citizens agree that some ways of life are worse than others – for instance that the life of a drug addict is less worthwhile than the life of a person who spends her time with family and philosophy – political liberals must concede that the state can sometimes permissibly use perfectionist reasons. I argue in this paper that this challenge is mistaken, because the comparison only tells us something about relative, not absolute, value. And because the real question concerns what the right justificatory constituency looks like, not what counts as reasonable in some other sense, the implication is that perfectionists and political liberals could construct equally plausible idealised constituencies. This stalemate gives us reason to develop arguments in favour of our preferred justificatory constituency. We cannot view local comparative judgements in isolation.

A wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been introduced to stop or slow down the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include school closures, environmental cleaning and disinfection, mask mandates, restrictions on freedom of assembly and lockdowns. These NPIs depend on coercion for their effectiveness, either directly or indirectly. A widely held view is that coercive policies need to be publicly justified—justified to each citizen—to be legitimate. Standardly, this is thought to entail that there is a scientific consensus on the factual propositions that are used to support the policies. In this paper, we argue that such a consensus has been lacking on the factual propositions justifying most NPIs. Consequently, they would on the standard view be illegitimate. This is regrettable since there are good reasons for granting the state the legitimate authority to enact NPIs under conditions of uncertainty. The upshot of our argument is that it is impossible to have both the standard interpretation of the permissibility of empirical claims in public justification and an effective pandemic response. We provide an alternative view that allows the state sufficient room for action while precluding the possibility of it acting without empirical support.