Melanie Fink Presents on ‘The Right to Human Explanation’ at Tübingen AI & Law Summer School
On 13 May 2025, Melanie Fink presented her latest research on the role of the duty to reason and other explanation rights to safeguard human dignity in the automated state at the AI & Law Summer School hosted by the University of Tübingen.
The International PhD Summer School on Artificial Intelligence and EU Law, taking place from May 12-16, 2025, is organized by Prof. Michèle Finck, Chair of Law and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Tübingen and Director of the CZS Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Law. Now in its second year, the summer school serves as an important forum for exchange on emerging issues at the interface of AI and EU law. The event brings together doctoral students from around the globe who are researching the regulation of AI, providing opportunities for dynamic discussions and networking with scholars and practitioners in the field.
In her presentation titled ‘A Right to a Human Explanation? Preserving Human Dignity in the Automated State’, Melanie Fink explored two critical debates in AI governance: the right to an explanation and the right to human involvement in automated decision-making processes. She examined various legal frameworks supporting explanation rights, including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, GDPR, AI Act, and Digital Services Act, analysing the scope and concrete requirements of these regulations. A key focus of the presentation was the various functions of explanation rights—including contestability, quality, legitimacy, and human dignity—and how these interact with human oversight provisions in the AI Act. Melanie Fink proposed that human overseers could serve as ‘human explainers’ and thus a bridge between complex AI systems and the individuals affected by their decisions.
This presentation is part of Dr. Fink's broader research project examining administrative justice in the automated state, recently funded by a three-year NWO-Veni grant (2025-2028). The project explores how to preserve administrative justice principles when public authorities deploy automated technologies, with particular focus on the role of explanation rights and ‘human-in-the-loop’ requirements in safeguarding human dignity and ensuring procedural justice in automated decision-making processes.
