Digitalised government in the Anthropocene: legal and extra-legal norms

The use of semi-automated and fully automated administrative decision-making systems may challenge legal compliance in a deep sense. While some legal requirements are widely known and relatively straightforward to implement in automated systems, deeper-lying legal principles and values may pose bigger challenges. This is especially the case when individuals with professional qualifications outside the legal field significantly influence the implementation of such systems. On the other hand, such involvement may increase the impact of extra-legal norms originating from other professions. Combining doctrinal analysis and qualitative analyses of authorities’ practices and underlying considerations, we map out how different types of legal phenomena and extra-legal norms influence the implementation of semi-automated and fully automated administrative decision-making systems in this way. Next, we extrapolate the results of this enquiry to predict how different legal phenomena and extra-legal norms will influence authorities’ implementation of automated systems in the context of the screening process of environmental impact assessments (EIA).