Going beyond the black box: The socio-legal-materiality of administrative law in the making at the Belgian Council of State

Drawing on both Actor-Network Theory (Callon, 1986) and on Kang and Kendall (2019) legal materiality analysis, this paper investigates how algorithmic technologies have been designed
1 An essential tool for maintaining accessibility to courts and tribunals at a time when budgetary savings are forcing court clerks to offer less availability to litigants, see ‘Digitalisation of justice in the European Union A toolbox of opportunities’, COM (2020) 710 final, https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/communication_digitalisation_en.pdf (accessed 8 June 2022). 2 CEPEJ, « Systèmes judiciaires européens. Rapport d’évaluation de la CEPEJ », 2018, p. 100, disponible via https://rm.coe.int/rapport-evaluation-partie-1-francais/16809fc056
3 April 22, 2019 revision of Article 149 of the Constitution with respect to publicitý of judgments and rulings, M.B., May 2, 2019, p. 42442.
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and developed at the Belgian Council of State. More precisely, it covers a case study to show the articulation between the “social”, the “material” and the “legal” in the creation of two tools: juriDict and eProadmin. It aims to demonstrates how materiality – like algorithms, applications, platforms, software, screens, legal texts, etc. – and human actors – like documentalists, court clerks, lawyers, computer scientists, magistrates, etc. – can influence organizing processes and working practices (D’Adderio & Pollock, 2020), facilitate access to law and justice, and reinforce the consistency of decision-making practices.