自动化的行政国家：合法性危机

摘要：行政国家的合法性是建立在我们对专业机构的信任上的。尽管它们不尽入宪法之眼，行政机构是治理复杂且不断变化的社会中的关键一环。它们被赋予了巨大的权力，因为它们能够专业且灵活地应对不断发展的状况。近几十年来，州和联邦机构已采用了一种新模式，即是“自动化（automation）”——行政部门越来越多地依赖软件和算法来履行其职责。然而，自动化的行政国家显然存在诸多问题。随着算法拒绝实现公民的权利和权益，诸多法律上的难题由之而来，引发了一系列复杂的考虑。迄今为止的学术研究主要以某一框架探讨了自动化的缺陷，探究我们如何确保自动化能够遵循现有的法律承诺，比如说正当程序。但是，这一讨论中缺乏的是对自动化机构合法性更广泛、更结构性的批评。自动化放弃了行政国家赖以成立的专业性和灵活性，而这正与它最初诞生的动机背道而驰。然而，解决这一问题的措施并不是阻止机构使用各项已在被应用的当代技术。本文旨在提出一个积极的行政国家愿景，即只有在自动化工具能够强化而不是削弱机构合法性的基础时，才采用这些工具。

Abstract: The legitimacy of the administrative state is premised on our faith in agency expertise. Despite their extra-constitutional structure, administrative agencies have been on firm footing for a long time in reverence to their critical role in governing a complex, evolving society. They are delegated enormous power because they respond expertly and nimbly to evolving conditions. In recent decades, state and federal agencies have embraced a novel mode of operation: automation. Agencies rely more and more on software and algorithms in carrying out their delegated responsibilities. The automated administrative state, however, is demonstrably riddled with concerns. Legal challenges regarding the denial of benefits and rights—from travel to disability—have revealed a pernicious pattern of bizarre and unintelligible outcomes. Scholarship to date has explored the pitfalls of automation with a particular frame, asking how we might ensure that automation honors existing legal commitments such as due process. Missing from the conversation are broader, structural critiques of the legitimacy of agencies that automate. Automation abdicates the expertise and nimbleness that justify the administrative state, undermining the very case for the existence and authority of agencies. Yet the answer is not to deny agencies access to technology that other twenty-first century institutions rely upon. This Article points toward a positive vision of the administrative state that adopts tools only when they enhance, rather than undermine, the underpinnings of agency legitimacy.