Dr John Danaher (Keele University), The Design of Social Epistemic Systems: Lessons from the Legal Trial

Abstract: Social epistemic systems are systems in which agents and institutions send and receive signals, and generate judgments of truth or falsity. The legal trial is a paradigmatic example of such a system. Taking this characterisation onboard, this paper sets out to provide a taxonomy of the different epistemic interventions into the legal system, and to develop a framework for evaluating such interventions. The taxonomy identifies four types of intervention, which vary in how they treat human agency (information hiding, instrumentalising, enhancing, and by-passing). The framework works from a multi-dimensional theory of legitimacy conditions. To illustrate the advantages of this framework, a specific case study is analysed. The case study is the increasing use of data-mining algorithms in legal decision-making. It is argued that the increasing use of such algorithms poses a new type of legitimacy threat to the legal system (the threat of algocracy). The paper concludes by evaluating three proposed solutions to this threat. Each is found to be lacking.