This Article considers whether agencies can use algorithms without running afoul of standards, both legal and normative, for reason-giving. It begins by disaggregating algorithmic reason-giving, explaining that algorithmic reason-giving includes both the reasons an agency gives for an algorithm’s design (systemic reason-giving) and the reasons an agency gives for an individual decision when the decision making process involves an algorithm (case-specific reason-giving). This Article then evaluates systemic reason-giving and case-specific reason-giving in turn. Once the normative assessment is complete, this Article considers its implications for arbitrary and capricious review, concluding that at least some algorithms should pass judicial muster. The Article finishes by offering a framework that courts can use when evaluating whether the use of an algorithm is arbitrary and capricious, and that agencies can use to decide whether to create an algorithm in the first place.

Although understanding the relationship between algorithms and reason-giving is important, this Article’s true aim is broader. It seeks to reframe debates over agencies’ use of AI by emphasizing that the baseline against which these algorithms should be compared is not some idealized human decision maker, but rather the various kinds of policies—rules, internal procedures, and guidance—that agencies have used since their inception to promote core administrative values like consistency, accuracy, and efficiency. The comparison between algorithms and policies better captures the role algorithms currently play in administrative governance, gives proper weight to the reasons agencies have for turning to algorithms in the first place, and helps us see how algorithms do and do not fit within the existing structures of administrative law. At bottom, comparing algorithms to policies reminds us that the tension between individualized consideration and centralized bureaucratic management is endemic to agency administration. At most, algorithms have given this tension a new flavor. Make no mistake: this tension cannot be eliminated, only managed. Algorithmic reason-giving is a case in point.

Many of our findings were novel, and they were staggering. We found that, holding all else equal, those living in rural areas were at least 55% more likely to experience a judgment of eviction just by virtue of where they lived. We also found that those living in jurisdictions that had adopted renter-friendly policies (URLTA) were more likely to avoid a judgment of eviction—even though these laws do not impact the eviction process itself. Additionally, we found that renters who lived in the same ZIP code or state as their landlord were significantly more likely to resolve their cases prior to judgment.

Collectively, these findings, and others, have implications for eviction policy. They suggest that we must pay more attention to rural courts and the factors that lead to disparate outcomes in them. They call for programs that encourage collaboration between property owners and home renters, such as mediation and other types of eviction diversion. These results also encourage further study of the period between when an eviction case is filed and when it is concluded to more fully understand how the various parties approach decision-making in this legal process. Throughout it all, the needs and voices of rural renters must be central in the ongoing conversation.

This Article fills that gap by focusing on how state AGs process and evaluate such notices under CAFA, using as a case study over ten years’ worth of unpublished data obtained from the Ohio Attorney General, regarding the Ohio AG’s review of thousands of CAFA settlement notices. The Article also addresses whether states should also be permitted to intervene as parties in CAFA suits, and the legal and policy issues regarding how much weight or deference a federal court should give to objections or input (or lack thereof) from the DOJ and state AGs, usually through amicus curiae briefs, to proposed settlements.

Though the United States and other states have for years expressed concern about Chinese economic coercion, these recent statements, remarkable for those who made them, were all carefully worded to omit direct accusations against China (indeed, China went unnamed), to avoid assertions of legality and illegality, to implicitly delineate Chinese actions (improper) from those of the United States (permissible), and to obscure differences between the EU’s broader understanding of economic coercion (which may in fact implicate U.S. actions as much as China’s) and the United States’s narrower construction. China itself denies the (indirect) accusations leveled against it, and asserts that it is instead U.S. actions that constitute “economic coercion and bullying.”

In light of this recent U.S. and EU practice asserting new claims concerning economic coercion, and the charges of hypocrisy leveled by China against the United States and its allies, this Essay will revisit a topic about which Michael Reisman has given considerable thought. It will seek to identify the content and bounds of these new claims, as well as related ones that appear in recent resolutions of the Security Council and Human Rights Council, and assess and evaluate their contributions. This recent practice reflects different views of the proper role and use of power in international relations, which in the context of economic coercion is manifested in two distinct approaches: regulatory and abolitionist.

Feminist Judgments, however, ably and persuasively suggests that there could be a more equitable and fairer reality.