Our weekly seminar series welcomes Deborah Hellman, the David Lurton Massee, Jr. professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Hellman’s main scholarly interests are discrimination and corruption. She is the author of When Is Discrimination Wrong? (2008).
Talk title
“Big data and compounding injustice”
Abstract
In this paper, I argue that the fact that a person has been a victim of prior injustice affects how others should treat her. In particular, this fact generates reasons that others should consider in deciding how they interact with her. This article’s moral claim is that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing that action. For ease of exposition, I call these reasons to act or refrain from acting so as not to compound prior injustice The Anti-Compounding Injustice Principle or ACI. This principle, if it exists, is likely be relevant to analyzing the moral issues raised by the increasing influence of so-called “big data” and its combination with the computational power of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Decisions that rely on big data and machine learning are similar in kind to decisions which, also evidence-based, are grounded in less comprehensive information and where the processes used to analyze that data to make predictions about the future are less powerful. Where big data driven decisions differ is with regard to degree. If more types of decisions are data-driven in this way and these decisions are grounded in more data, then these new technological tools may compound more injustice than was possible before. If so, this is of moral concern.
Recommended readings
D. Hellman. “Big Data and Compounding Injustice” (PDF), unpublished paper, 2020.
D. Hellman. “Sex, Causation and Algorithms” (PDF). Washington University Law Review 98 (2020).
D. Hellman. “Measuring Algorithmic Fairness” (PDF). Virginia Law Review 108 (June 2020).
About Deborah Hellman
Deborah Hellman joined the Law School in 2012 after serving on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Law since 1994. She is the director of UVA Law’s Center for Law & Philosophy.
There are two main strands to Hellman’s work. The first focus is on equal protection law and its philosophical justification. She is the author of When Is Discrimination Wrong? (Harvard University Press, 2008) and co-editor of The Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (Oxford University Press, 2013) and several articles related to equal protection. The second strand focuses on the relationship between money and legal rights. This includes articles on campaign finance law, bribery and corruption, each of which explore and challenge the normative foundations of current doctrine. Her article "A Theory of Bribery" won the 2019 Fred Berger Memorial Prize (for philosophy of law) from the American Philosophical Association. In 2020 she won the Association of American Law Schools Section on Jurisprudence Article Award for “Measuring Algorithmic Fairness,” which was published in the Virginia Law Review.
In addition, she writes about the obligations of professional roles, especially in the context of clinical medical research. She teaches constitutional law, legal theory and contracts, as well as advanced classes and seminars on questions related to these fields (Discrimination Theory, Profiling and Contract Theory, for example).
Hellman was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2005-06) and the Eugene P. Beard Faculty Fellow in Ethics at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University (2004-05). She was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers in 1999 and was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2007-08 and at the University of Virginia in the fall of 2011.
About the SRI Seminar Series
The SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. Seminars are led by a leading or emerging scholar and feature extensive discussion.
Each week, a featured speaker will present for 45 minutes, followed by 45 minutes of discussion. Registered attendees will be emailed a Zoom link approximately one hour before the event begins. The event will be recorded and posted online.
Deborah Hellman