Aviva de Groot is Assistant Professor constitutional and administrative law. Her research focuses on the creation and justifcation of rights-relevant knowledge, information, rules, and policies. She studies these subjects to the backdrop of failing legal protections against systemic and institutionalized harms and societal inequalities. In 2023 She graduated at Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) with the thesis titled 'Care to Explain? A critical epistemic in/justice based analysis of legal explanation obligations and ideals for ‘AI’-infused times'. the monograph investigates legal duties of justification in administrative and health law, including guiding principles and practice contexts. The subject of justification is studied through an inclusive critical lens based on insights from the philosophical domains of epistemic justice and injustice. The book translates these insights to the legal domain, modeled into a set of duties around the provision of justifications. The model can be used in research, policy and practice. Aviva likes to collaborate across disciplines and is involved in several international projects.

More information about Aviva de Groot

Research

Aviva de Groot is Assistant Professor constitutional and administrative law. Her research focuses on the creation and justifcation of rights-relevant knowledge, information, rules, and policies. She studies these subjects to the backdrop of failing legal protections against systemic and institutionalized harms and societal inequalities.

Aviva takes special interest into the use of technologies, including automation tech, within these spheres. Her fascination has roots her own technical background and was importantly shaped by her years working in a legal aid firm. The firm specialized in in early cases of injustice through state automation, more particularly legal protections against automated traffic violation and vehicle registration charges. It became apparent how the 'black box' character of the complex cases was attributable to policy, procedure, state interactions and judicial cultures rather than technology, inspiring her to pursue further studies into this.

In 2023 She graduated at Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) with the thesis titled 'Care to Explain? A critical epistemic in/justice based analysis of legal explanation obligations and ideals for ‘AI’-infused times'. the monograph investigates legal duties of justification in administrative and health law, including guiding principles and practice contexts. The subject of justification is studied through an inclusive critical lens based on insights from the philosophical domains of epistemic justice and injustice. The book translates these insights to the legal domain, modeled into a set of duties around the provision of justifications. The model can be used in research, policy and practice.

In her current role she xplores value of positive duties such as those in social rights for combating racism, discrimination and societal inequities. She specifically focuses on the potential of the executive for realizing these goals but, importantly, also on their potential for resisting law and political pressure that are contrary to these aims (something she labels 'resistivity'). Both aims require applicable and historically informed knowledge of how inequalities come about and are maintained in rules and methods. They also require clear legal duties to gain and apply such knowledge.

Beyond disciplinary boundaries

Aviva likes to collaborate across disciplines. Her years at TILT also familiarized her with the challenges that come with interdisciplinary research and teaching. She is a member of a multidisciplinary group who studies these challenges in the context of technology specifically, with whom she wrote about this, and organized a multi-day Lorentz workshop.

Within the department of constitutional and administrative law, she uses this experience to build bridges between 'law and everything else.' The inclination to look beyond her current occupation is with her from the start. Where some people pursue art and/or crafts later in their intellectual career paths, Aviva does it the other way around. Her working life started in the arts (set building and design for film), with socio-legal work on the side until she flipped priorities and pursued a full-time career in law. She finds that both types of creative work inspire each other and she continues to engage in fiction and woodworking in her free time. A special eye is kept open for opportunities to combine these careers.

Projects and collaborations

Aviva is involved in various projects that study public institutions and (administrative) law. With Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska, Doris Allhuter and others she explores methods for the in- and outside studies of administrative bodies; with Gijs van Maanen and  others she focuses on the subject of resistance within the executive in the context of digital technologies. both collaborations  employ workshop-based research, something Aviva also developed for her post-doc research and that she hopes to take further.

Funded by a seed grant from Leiden University, she will work with assistant professor colonial and world history Bart Verheijen on a project that aims to create practically useful knowledge on the theme of 'countervailing bureaucratic power'. They will study contemporary cases of data-driven institutional injustice against the backdrop of Dutch colonial practices of the past. The central question is how a historically informed understanding of public servants' resistance to bureaucratic power abuse helps us today in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of regulatory governance. What can we learn from historical traces of principles, rules, and other factors that legitimate or hamper resistance? Workshops will start off the endeavor of collecting a body of sources and designing methods for the interdisciplinary activities. Colleagues from both faculties as well as civil society organizations and students will be invited, also with an eye to integrating the theme into (interdisciplinary) education.

Aviva is a research associate at the African Institute for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (ACEPS) in Johannesburg. She is also involved with the working groups technologies and human rights of the NJCM, and the working groups Social Rights, and Human Rights and Technology of the NNHRR.

Education

Aviva is the coordinator of the bachelor course Introduction to International Human Rights Law. Focusing on the UN system and history, the course treats a range of urgent and important human rights subjects each year, cooperating with specialized experts on each theme.

She also guides groups of students for a law clinic in the master course Privatissimum en practicum -Bestuursrechtelijke vraagstukken in Europese context. She is a teacher in the team of the second-year course on administrative law, and guides bachelor's and master’s students in the writing of their theses.

Earlier on she taught at the University of Amsterdam (coordinator interdisciplinary minor privacy studies) and Tilburg University (among others in the joint bachelor data science).

Her expertise and experience inform her critical stance towards the naive use of AI in education. She is interested in alternative methods for teaching and testing that are also more inclusive, something she is eager to promote in the faculty of law.