Proving legal error in an age of Automated Decision-Making

This paper examines how the various, traditional ‘grounds’ of review—or categories of legal errors that decision-makers commonly make—are affected by the automation of administrative decision-making. It argues that automation has the potential to significantly decrease, and even eliminate, several common kinds of legal error that human decision-makers make. However, the recent Australian examples show that, without careful human oversight in the design process, the rate of certain kinds of errors—particularly those associated with the fairness of decisions—may dramatically increase; and other legal errors may become impossible for applicants to prove in judicial review proceedings.