Context Matters: The Challenges of Aligning Legal Justification with Explainable AI
The LEXplain project (PI: Prof. Henrik Palmer Olsen) publishes a new article in European Review of Digital Administration & Law. In a joint effort LEXplain researchers draw attention to the importance of context sensitivity in applying the law to a concrete set of factual circumstances.
The paper argues that justificatory explainability should not be confused with technological explainability (often referred to as XAI). Instead, justificatory explainability is a requirement that decisions in law are based on reasons that explain how the facts of a case relate to the legal rule that is applied in the case.
The synthesis of fact and law in relation to the individual decision being made requires situational awareness of the context in which the rule operates. AI systems that are being introduced to interact with legal decision-making processes in public administration must be designed in a way which ensures that such context sensitivity is not erased from the decision-making process.
The article is available here.