Kate O'Regan Intervarsity Moot Competition 2026

The use of automated decision-making (ADM) systems by states and private actors has expanded rapidly over the past decade, moving from narrow administrative uses into consequential domains such as welfare eligibility, policing, immigration screening, credit scoring, and content moderation. Early controversies — including the Dutch 'toeslagenaffaire' childcare benefits scandal, the Australian 'Robodebt' scheme, and the UK A-level grading algorithm of 2020 — exposed how opaque algorithmic systems can produce discriminatory outcomes, deny due process, and operate at a scale that overwhelms traditional administrative remedies. These cases catalysed legal and scholarly debate about how existing human rights instruments, including the ICCPR, ICESCR and regional charters, apply to decisions made or materially shaped by machines. The core dispute concerns how to reconcile the efficiency and predictive power of ADM with foundational rights to equality and non-discrimination, privacy, freedom of expression, an effective remedy, and a fair hearing. Key fault lines include whether a 'right to human review' should be recognised as customary, the threshold at which algorithmic profiling triggers data-protection obligations, the allocation of liability between developers and deploying states, and the extent to which trade secrets may shield models from judicial scrutiny. The 2021 OHCHR report on the right to privacy in the digital age, the 2024 OHCHR work on AI and human rights, UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, and the Council of Europe's 2024 Framework Convention on AI — the first binding international AI treaty — have all sought to translate abstract principles into operational duties of transparency, impact assessment, and redress. Today the regulatory landscape is fragmenting. The EU AI Act (in force 2024, phased application through 2026) imposes risk-tiered obligations including bans on certain social-scoring and real-time biometric uses; the United States has proceeded largely through executive guidance and sectoral enforcement; China has issued binding rules on generative AI and recommendation algorithms tied to state content priorities; and many Global South states warn that emerging norms are being set without their participation. Litigation is also reshaping the field, from the Hague District Court's SyRI judgment to ongoing cases on facial recognition and predictive policing. The question before this committee is how courts and lawmakers should articulate the human-rights minima that any automated decision affecting an individual must satisfy.