Procedural Justice

Procedural justice is the fairness of the processes by which decisions are made and disputes are resolved, independent of the outcomes those processes produce. In the context of algorithmic governance, procedural justice demands that subjects of algorithmic decisions have access to the criteria applied to them, the opportunity to contest errors, and the assurance that the decision-making process itself is not structurally biased against them. The right to explanation is one expression of procedural justice, but it is only partial: a process can be explained and still be unjust. Procedural justice in algorithmic systems requires not merely explanation but structural coupling — mechanisms that allow the governed to perturb the governance system in ways the system is structurally required to process. Without such coupling, explanation is a performance of justice rather than its substance.