Although international legal scholars have never captured or paid attention to the epistemology of the secret at work in international legal thought of practice, the idea of secret has not been totally absent from international legal thought. For instance, international legal scholars have occasionally mobilized the idea of the hermeneutics of suspicion to describe the way in which certain scholars dismiss opponents’ arguments to be ideologically or politically motivated wrong postures as opposed to scientifically valid positions. Likewise, a lot of scholarly works have been focused on the secretive and undisclosed practices which are supposedly at work in various international legal processes. This chapter reviews these contemporary engagements by international lawyers with the idea of secret in international law.

Following the financial crisis of 2008 and ensuing austerity measures, politicians turned their attention to individual tax evasion and corporate tax avoidance. The United States enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in 2010 and signed a series of Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) for the exchange of tax information. The OECD added Article 27 to its model tax treaty, laying out the rules for contracting parties who wish to collaborate in collecting taxes within the other State. Furthermore, the OECD developed the Multilateral Agreement for Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAATM) and initiated the BEPS project to reduce tax evasion and tax avoidance globally. One of the missions of the BEPS project is to ensure transparency while promoting increased certainty and predictability. Action 5 focuses on the transparency of harmful tax practices, particularly in the IP regimes. Action 12 requires taxpayers to disclose their aggressive tax planning arrangements. Action 13 reexamines the transfer pricing documentation. While these reforms are a step forward in transparency, more focus needs to be placed on financial secrecy and transparency in future reforms.

Chapter 3 identifies the distinct but intertwined principles of sustainable development that particularly found resonance in the IFIs. It discusses the posited link between the two, with public participation serving as the procedural component of sustainable development, which in substance requires the integration of environmental, social, and economic concerns. The proceduralization of the concept is analyzed in relation to similar trends in international environmental law, international human rights law, and international economic (trade and investment) law.

In addition to right representation, our new framework for democratic global governance must comprise global circles of participation chosen by global sortition. We must make something new work for the world by giving new life to human institutions at every level of governance. To accomplish this, we must employ random selection to create an interlinked network of global participation that will be a central part of a new system of democratic global governance. We must establish, globally, multiple levels of multidimensional and multiconnected circles of participation through random selection, reflecting the diversity of views in the entirety of the world, ascending and descending through interaction at different tiers of governance, linking, overlapping, and jointly acting in different sectors and on different subjects of governance, in an ongoing expression of human imagination and democratic will. Among these sortition circles must be circles for nature and circles for the future. We must make these global circles into rings of human action in which everyone throughout the world will have an equal opportunity to participate.

The chapters in this Part VII of Complex Ethics Consultations: Cases that Haunt Us are a powerful reminder that healthcare ethics consultation does not involve clinical ethics consultation alone. Organizational ethics issues can also weigh heavily on healthcare providers causing deep moral distress. The four chapters in this section reinforce enduring themes, but time and experience allow a reexamination. The first theme is the lesson of truth-telling, error disclosure, and organizational responsibility. The second is the importance of transparency in organizational decision making along with the importance of communication and coordination of care. These themes are explored in the part they played in real cases, looking at the lessons they teach; current dilemmas; the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion; and finally, the meanings for future practices. As the field of ethics consultation progresses, so too will moral distress and the need for the profession to protect its practitioners, as well as the ethicists to emotionally protect themselves. The successful future practice of ethics consultation depends on it.

This brief chapter, closing Part I, concludes that the individual is procedurally involved in such contexts to a minor extent and offers reflections on the reasons for this. It discusses the culture of state-centrism at the Court, its passive approach to procedural mechanisms, and certain fears it likely has. The reasons are challenged in this chapter, which ends with a brief word on how transparency practices can also contribute to the further integration of individuals in the procedural law of the World Court.

This introductory chapter explains the need for adopting an overarching perspective to the allocation of limited rights. Although the applicable legal frameworks may suggest otherwise, the awards of public contracts, authorisations, subsidies or government sales share common characteristics in the event that the number of rights available for grant is limited. These similarities are nowhere as manifest as with regard to the question of whether governments should use some form of competitive tendering when allocating these ‘limited rights’. Although the public interests involved in the allocation of these limited rights differ in substance and respective weight, competitive procedures should aim to optimise the pursuit of the different public interests involved. Using Mark Moore’s theory of creating and recognising public value, this chapter provides a general reflection upon the distinct role of the legal framework for allocating governments in solving this optimisation problem.

This chapter roots the authors' insights about automated legal guidance in a broader examination of why and how to address the democracy deficit in administrative law. As this chapter contemplates the future of agency communications, it also explores in greater detail the possibility that technological developments may allow government agencies not only to explain the law to the public using automated tools but also to automate the legal compliance obligations of individuals. While automated legal compliance raises serious concerns, recent examples reveal that it may soon become a powerful tool that agencies can apply broadly under the justifications of administrative efficiency. As this chapter argues, the lessons learned from our study of automated legal guidance are critical to maintaining values like transparency and legitimacy, as automated compliance expands as a result of perceived benefits like efficiency.

The Conclusion emphasizes the growing importance of automated legal guidance tools across government agencies. It crystalizes the insight that automated legal guidance tools reflect a trade-off between government agencies representing the law accurately and presenting it in accessible and understandable terms. While automated legal guidance tools enable agencies to reach more members of the public and provide them quick and easy explanations of the law, these quick and easy explanations sometimes obscure what the law actually is. The Conclusion acknowledges and accepts the importance of automated legal guidance to the future of governance, and, especially in light of this acknowledgement, recommends that legislators and agency officials adopt the policy recommendations presented in this book.

As Chapter 4 demonstrated, automated legal guidance often enables the government to present complex law as though it is simple without actually engaging in simplification of the underlying law. While this approach offers advantages in terms of administrative efficiency and ease of use by the public, it also causes the government to present the law as simpler than it is, leading to less precise advice and potentially inaccurate legal positions. As the use of automated legal guidance by government agencies is likely to grow in the future, a number of policy interventions are needed. This chapter offers multiple detailed policy recommendations for federal agencies that have introduced, or may introduce, chatbots, virtual assistants, and other automated tools to communicate the law to the public. Our recommendations are organized into five general categories: (1) transparency; (2) reliance; (3) disclaimers; (4) process; and (5) accessibility, inclusion, and equity.

The Introduction presents an overview of the use of automated legal guidance by government agencies. It offers examples of chatbots, virtual assistants, and other online tools in use across US federal government agencies and shows how the government is committed to expanding their application. The Introduction sets forth some of the critical features of automated legal guidance, including its tendency to make complex aspects of the law seem simple. The Introduction previews how automated legal guidance promises to increase access to complex statutes and regulations. However, the Introduction cautions that there are underappreciated costs of automated legal guidance, including that its simplification of statutes and regulations is more likely to harm members of the public who lack access to legal counsel than high-income and wealthy individuals. The Introduction provides a roadmap for the remainder of the book.

This chapter sets forth how government agencies are using artificial intelligence to automate their delivery of legal guidance to the public. The chapter first explores how many federal agencies have a duty not only to enforce the law but also to serve the public, including by explaining the law and helping the public understand how it applies. Agencies must contend with expectations that they will provide customer service experiences akin to those provided by the private sector. At the same time, government agencies lack sufficient resources. The complexity of statutes and regulations significantly compounds this challenge for agencies. As this chapter illustrates, the federal government has begun using virtual assistants, chatbots, and related technology to respond to tens of millions of inquiries from the public about the application of the law.

This chapter illuminates some of the hidden costs of the federal agencies’ use of automated legal guidance to explain the law to the public. It highlights the following features of these tools: they make statements that deviate from the formal law; they fail to provide notice to users about the accuracy and legal value of their statements; and they induce reliance in ways that impose inequitable burdens among different user populations. The chapter also considers how policymakers should weigh these costs against the benefits of automated legal guidance when contemplating whether to adopt, or increase, agencies’ use of these tools.

This chapter describes the results of the authors' research of automated legal guidance tools across the federal government, conducted over a five-year period from 2019 through 2023. The authors first began this study in preparation for a conference on tax law and artificial intelligence in 2019, and were able to expand it significantly, under the auspices of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), in 2021. ACUS is an independent US government agency charged with recommending improvements to administrative process and procedure. The goals of this study were to understand how federal agencies use automated legal guidance and to offer recommendations based on these findings. During their research, the authors examined the automated legal guidance activities of every US federal agency. This research found that agencies used automation extensively to offer guidance to the public, albeit with varying levels of sophistication and legal content. This chapter focuses on two well-developed forms of automated legal guidance currently employed by federal agencies: the US Citizenship Immigration Services’ “Emma” and the Internal Revenue Service’s “Interactive Tax Assistant.”

This chapter explores how automated legal guidance helps both federal agencies and members of the public. It outlines several specific benefits, including administrative efficiency, communication of complex law in plain language, transparency regarding agency interpretations of the law, internal and external consistency regarding agency communications, and public engagement with the law.