From Command and Control to Collaboration and Deference: The Transformation of Auto Safety Regulation

Created in 1966 primarily as a rulemaking body empowered to force thetechnology of motor vehicle safety, the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) had by the mid-1980s largely abandoned rulemaking in favor of aggressively recalling defective vehicles. Devastating losses in pre-enforcement judicial review of rules combined with judicial embrace of recalls to drive that first-period adaptation. Congressional reaction mimicked the signals from the courts, and the Reagan administration\u27 s regulatory reform and relief programs of the 1980s further solidified NHTSA\u27s rulemaking retreat. Prodded by congressional mandates, beginning in 1991, but largely of 21st century origin, NHTSA returned to rulemaking in the last two decades, but in a radically revised form

Presidential Administration in a Regime of Separated Powers: An Analysis of Recent American Experience

This Article examines presidential direction of administrative action in the Obama and early Trump Administrations against the backdrop of ongoing debates concerning: (i) the desirability of and appropriate techniques for presidential control of administration and (ii) the relevance of separated powers when American government is under unified political control. To give this analysis a concrete context, the Article provides in-depth case studies of presidential administration in immigration policy, climate change policy, and executive structuring of the administrative state, under both the Obama and early Trump Administrations

'It's Reducing a Human Being to a Percentage'; Perceptions of Justice in Algorithmic Decisions

Data-driven decision-making consequential to individuals raises important questions of accountability and justice. Indeed, European law provides individuals limited rights to 'meaningful information about the logic' behind significant, autonomous decisions such as loan approvals, insurance quotes, and CV filtering. We undertake three experimental studies examining people's perceptions of justice in algorithmic decision-making under different scenarios and explanation styles. Dimensions of justice previously observed in response to human decision-making appear similarly engaged in response to algorithmic decisions. Qualitative analysis identified several concerns and heuristics involved in justice perceptions including arbitrariness, generalisation, and (in)dignity. Quantitative analysis indicates that explanation styles primarily matter to justice perceptions only when subjects are exposed to multiple different styles---under repeated exposure of one style, scenario effects obscure any explanation effects. Our results suggests there may be no 'best' approach to explaining algorithmic decisions, and that reflection on their automated nature both implicates and mitigates justice dimensions.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'18), April 21--26, Montreal, Canad