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I turbulenta tider, då grundläggande rättigheter och begränsningar för maktutövning utmanas, ökar betydelsen av de gränser som den konstitutionella rätten ställer upp för utövandet av offentlig makt. Samtidigt blir det konstitutionellrättsliga läget allt mer komplext, inte minst på grund av europarättens inflytande.

Konstitutionell rätt behandlar den konstitutionella rättens tre centrala teman: maktdelning och andra förutsättningar för utövande av offentlig makt, skyddet för grundläggande rättigheter samt rättsligt genomdrivande av konstitutionellrättsliga normer. Utifrån dessa tre teman behandlar författarna konstitutionella bestämmelser med ursprung i svensk nationell rätt, EU-rätten och Europakonventionen om mänskliga rättigheter.

Boken är anpassad för att kunna användas som lärobok på juristutbildningen, men riktar sig också till en bredare publik. Konstitutionell rätt är relevant läsning för såväl erfarna jurister som läsare som är intresserade av konstitutionella frågor mer allmänt. Denna tredje upplaga är påtagligt omarbetad och utvidgad.

Digital developments have a significant impact on crime and therefore on law enforcement practices. One of the profound issues is that the police have to deal with challenges in balancing new technological possibilities for law enforcement agencies in the investigation of crimes, and the implications that these developments have for fundamental human rights. There are no clear-cut solutions or answers. Step by step, the police have to find answers to several legal and ethical issues that go together with the digitalisation of society. The aim of the PDS-network and of this volume is to address and discuss critical policing issues. This volume is the result of the 2023 Policing in the Digital Society Network conference at the Police Academy in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. This volume provides the police, as well as institutions for academic and police education, with insights into the latest developments and legal and ethical issues in modern policing.

In constitutional theory, the requirement of necessity is an integral part of a wider proportionality assessment in the limitation of constitutional rights. It fulfils a function of sorting out measures that restrict rights beyond what is required to fulfil the intended purpose. Within data protection, the requirement varies in strictness and interpretation—from ‘ordinary’ necessity to ‘strict necessity’. Recently, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has introduced what appears to be an even stricter requirement of ‘absolute necessity’ relating to the processing of biometric information under the EU Law Enforcement Directive (LED). In practice, however, the implications of those respective levels of strictness tends to vary, from a strict ‘least restrictive means’ test, to an analysis of whether a measure is necessary for a more effective or a more efficient fulfilment of the intended purpose. In this contribution the principle of necessity as applied by the ECJ is analysed as it pertains to the LED and the Charter, more specifically in the context of implementing AI supported analysis of biometric data. The gradual development of the interpretation of necessity is traced in the data protection case law of the ECJ. The study shows the increased emphasis placed on proportionality over time, highlighting both strengths and potential weaknesses of the requirement in relation to the use of AI supported decision-making in the law enforcement context.

This article examines the integration of data analytics and automated fraud-detection systems within welfare sectors, focusing on the evolving legal landscape in Europe. Throughout Europe, the use of advanced technologies to monitor welfare payments has intensified. However, large-scale data profiling raises significant legal challenges, exemplified by the judicial scrutiny of the Dutch SyRI system, which was found to violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This study addresses a pivotal question: whether the use of such systems under EU law constitutes law-enforcement activities or routine administrative operations. This classification impacts the legal framework—GDPR or the Law Enforcement Directive (LED)—governing data processing practices, and influences obligations under the forthcoming EU Artificial Intelligence Act. Through an analysis of European law, including GDPR, LED, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and relevant case law, this article highlights the complexities of this legal demarcation and the potential for conflicting regulatory incentives. Swedish examples are used to illustrate how different legal and institutional setups affect these issues, offering insights into the broader implications for the legality and governance of fraud detection systems.

This contribution examines the relationship between automation, discretion, and proportionality. It argues that automation efforts in public administration need to be further discussed and analyzed in relation to requirements of proportionality flowing from both national and European law, as the principle carries important implications for both the implementation of automated systems and the responsibilities of decision-makers within those systems. The different facets of proportionality flowing from, inter alia, constitutional, and human rights law, administrative law, and data protection law are explored, with four distinct stages of proportionality analysis identified: legislative, system, decision, and ex post proportionality. These stages all carry different implications for discretion and the prospects of automation. Through the requirements in these different stages, the authors conclude that proportionality ought to act as another driver of keeping human oversight of automated systems. This human oversight will however, in relation to proportionality, require further contextual awareness and control of correct output proportionality, a role which may be significantly more demanding than a more limited oversight implied by current legal discussions on "humans in the loop".

The Rule of Law is a foundational value of the modern democratic state. It contains within its most influential conceptualizations key legal principles to reduce arbitrariness in the exercise of power, and in doing so promoting legal certainty and individual autonomy, while protecting against despotism. A growing body of research points to the potential for AI to undermine Rule of Law values, especially when implemented in the exercise of public power. This contribution attempts to approach these concerns through four critical dichotomies. These dichotomies are intended to assist in underpinning a theoretical foundation for a critical analysis of AI, assisting in structuring previously diverse explorations into Rule of Law concerns along more fundamental analytical lines.

This contribution situates the rule of law in the context of automated decision-making by using leading rule of law theories to distill some key underlying values of the rule of law which carry particular significance for automated decision-making; dignity, autonomy, and democracy. While disagreement may exist surrounding specific components of the rule of law, general agreement seems to exist surrounding these core values underpinning the concept. By adopting these underlying values of the rule of law, issues with automation, such as the foreseeability of law, access to justice, or non-discrimination, can also be conceptualized as tensions between achieving automation and maintaining respect for human dignity, autonomy of the individual, and a connection to democratic processes. These tensions are finally explained and illustrated through the analogy of normative refraction occurring as automated decision-making requires legal intent to be mediated not only by the language of the law, but through additional refractive layers of code and data. While existing rule of law principles are adapted for managing the refraction added by the language of law, new approaches may be needed to manage the challenges emerging from the additional layers of code and data.

Public and private organizations are increasingly implementing various algorithmic decision-making systems. Through legal and practical incentives, humans will often need to be kept in the loop of such decision-making to maintain human agency and accountability, provide legal safeguards, or perform quality control. Introducing such human oversight results in various forms of semi-automated, or hybrid decision-making – where algorithmic and human agents interact. Building on previous research we illustrate the legal dependencies forming an impetus for hybrid decision-making in the policing, social welfare, and online moderation contexts. We highlight the further need to situate hybrid decision-making in a wider legal environment of data protection, constitutional and administrative legal principles, as well as the need for contextual analysis of such principles. Finally, we outline a research agenda to capture contextual legal dependencies of hybrid decision-making, pointing to the need to go beyond legal doctrinal studies by adopting socio-technical perspectives and empirical studies.

Författarna beskriver utmaningar med att använda AI samt att digitalisera och automatisera beslutsfattande. Rättsstatliga principer som legalitet, proportionalitet och likabehandling riskerar att inte uppfyllas i såväl utformningen av systemen som i tillämpning och uppföljning av beslut som fattas maskinellt. Exempel från svenska myndigheters användning av digitala beslutsstöd visar att brister kan få långtgående konsekvenser.