Kadish Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory: Deborah Hellman, University of Virginia School of Law

Deborah Hellman is the Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and Director of its Center for Law & Philosophy.  One main focus of Hellmans’ works is on discrimination.  She is the author of the book When is Discrimination Wrong? (2008, Harvard Univ. Press) and the co-editor of The Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (2013, Oxford Univ. press), as well as numerous articles related to equal protection law and theory.  Her interest in discrimination led her to investigate debates about when and whether algorithms treat people fairly.  She has written several articles exploring this topic including Measuring Algorithmic Fairness, which won the Association of American Law Schools Section on Jurisprudence Award in 2020, The Algorithmic Leviathan: Arbitrariness, Fairness and Opportunity in Algorithmic Decision-making Systems (with Kathleen Creel, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2022), and Big Data and Compounding Injustice, (Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2023).

Paper and Abstract:

Algorithmic Fairness

This draft entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Algorithmic Fairness attempts to describe the literature and significant debates about this emerging topic.  It begins by dividing views about algorithmic fairness into two broad categories: comparative and non-comparative accounts.  Some scholars understand algorithmic fairness as an issue of comparative justice, focusing on whether one individual or group is treated fairly, given how another individual or group is (or would be) treated.  Other scholars understand algorithmic fairness as an issue of non-comparative justice, focusing on whether an individual or group is treated as they are entitled to be treated.  In addition, algorithmic fairness raises questions about fair data practices and when and why reliance on past patterns of behavior about people who are like current people is some respects treats these current individuals fairly.  Lastly, this entry discusses how debates about the nature of socially salient categories like race or sex relate to debates about algorithms, as well as questions about what makes other traits proxies for these protected attributes. 

About the Workshop:

A workshop for presenting and discussing work in progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to provide an opportunity for students to engage with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues of potential interest to philosophers and political theorists.

The theme for the Spring 2024 workshop is “Intelligence: Human, Animal, Artificial,” and we will host scholars working in Philosophy, Biology, Psychology, Law, and Engineering. Our underlying concern will be the normative implications of different ideas of what intelligence is and can do.

This semester the workshop is co-taught by Christopher Kutz and Josh Cohen.