Ethics, Rule of Law and Pandemic Responses

The argument recounts a growing dissatisfaction with ethics and principled design as either the single or primary self-regulatory regime ensuring responsible data use and trustworthy AI. From this foundation it proposes rule of law compliance as a parallel and supportive normative and operational direction to address the deficiencies likely in any over-reliance on ethics regulation. In expressions of resistance to COVID responses there is scant community confidence in assertions that ethical reflections answer the deeply felt and differentially identified reservations regarding surveillance and data usage in pandemic responses. It is concluded that without the essence of democratic participation, in the form of citizen connection with emergency policymaking, and potential actionability through legal remedies if rights and liberties are compromised (both features of ‘thick rule of law’), then the regulatory legitimacy crisis facing principled regulatory regimes remains.