This article revolves around the search for statutory recognition of the use of algorithmics (including rule-based systems) to make decisions. Thus, the focus is on whether a powerconferring rule is necessary before an administrative authority may issue a valid automated decision. By claiming that such a power-conferring rule is not only desirable but also a legal requirement, one contends that the shifting to automated decision making in the public sector is simply a by-product of reengineering bureaucratic practice through Information and Communication Technology. The issue is essential because there are several cases throughout Europe and beyond in which the latter is precisely the case. Moreover, values such as efficiency and flexibility to adapt to fast technological change could be considered sound justificatory arguments to purport that automated decision-making in the public sector should not be governed through the traditional arsenal of the rule of law. The primary purpose of the article is to offer a first conceptual skeleton to sow the seeds for further research on a normative claim that automated public administration decision-making should, nonetheless, be implemented in light of the rule of law. Secondly, it offers some recommendations for a legal framework to govern such a practice. The background idea is that focusing on the legal power to make an automated decision constitutes a necessary step to guarantee that the ethical and political principles that should undergird the adoption, development and implementation of any form of algorithmic decisionmaking in the public sector are appropriately and adequately taken into account. public sector, automated decisions, rule of law, algorithms

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The influence of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) on the landscape planning legal framework of Italy, Spain and England is discussed. The ELC defines landscape, holistically, as something perceived by people in their everyday life. Integrating landscape protection and management into every policy influencing the quality of a territory is a major ELC’s goal. This view challenges the interpretation that stresses the continuing importance of objective landscape values, such as natural beauty, recognisable by expert assessment. This dialectic also reveals a fault line between local democracy/participation and a centralist approach towards landscape protection. We found signs of such competing narratives in the landscape planning regulations of the said jurisdictions implementing the ELC, although the rationales that inspire them were little affected. We argue that the said dialectic may be seen more as an opportunity to build a more comprehensive system of landscape protection than a downside.

In this article, we appraise an idea of human dignity (HD) as pragmatically oriented to support social rights claims. By analysing the role of dignitarian arguments in the constitutional-like case law of four European jurisdictions (France, the UK, Italy and Germany), we demonstrate that caution prevails about the possibility of using HD in each of these countries as an ultimate yardstick for upholding social policies. Such findings challenge the assumption that one can grasp HD as a legal notion through a foundational approach. In our view, neither HD reflects any natural or social essence of men and women, nor can it consequently be conceived as the source of universal fundamental rights. Instead, (1) we recommend a notion of HD as a status primarily conceived as a political-institutional (conventional) artefact. Thus, (2) we consequently sustain that dignity may pertain to states too, and we can see it as a way of reciprocating the duty to fair cooperation in a just society. In the same vein, (3) HD works best in the social realm when an expressive function, rather than a defining one, is recognised as its proper function. This aspect helps explain why HD is often called to support other principles in judicial argumentation. This notion of HD seems to us coherent with social rights as relying on a complex institutional arrangement centred on political responsibility and a commitment to social justice. Concerning the assessment of the conditions attached by the states to the enjoyment of welfare benefits, HD tells us that disproportionate sanctions, whose objective appears to be more a way of blackmailing welfare recipients than pursuing an ideal of fair reciprocity, do violate both the institutional dignity of public authorities and that of the persons affected.

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