Sylvie Delacroix

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Sylvie Delacroix

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Publications

Available Open Access 

  

What if data-intensive technologies’ ability to mould habits with unprecedented precision is also capable of triggering some mass disability of profound consequences? What if we become incapable of modifying the deeply-rooted habits that stem from our increased technological dependence? 


On an impoverished understanding of habit, the above questions are easily shrugged off. Habits are deemed rigid by definition: ‘as long as our deliberative selves remain capable of steering the design of data-intensive technologies, we’ll be fine’. To question this assumption, this book first articulates the way in which the habitual stretches all the way from unconscious tics to purposive, intentionally acquired habits. It also highlights the extent to which our habit-reliant, pre-reflective intelligence normally supports our deliberative selves. It is when habit rigidification sets in that this complementarity breaks down. 


This book moves from a philosophical inquiry into the ‘double edge’ of habit -its empowering and compromising sides- to consideration of individual and collective strategies to keep habits at the service of our ethical life. Allowing the norms that structure our forms of life to be cotton-wooled in abstract reasoning is but one of the factors that can compromise ongoing social and moral transformations. Systems designed to simplify our practical reasoning can also make us ‘sheep-like’. Drawing a parallel between the moral risk inherent in both legal and algorithmic systems, this book concludes with concrete interventions designed to revive the scope for normative experimentation. Far from confined to a philosophical audience, this book should appeal to any reader concerned with our retaining an ability to trigger change within the practices that shape our ethical sensibility.


Examples of Concrete Interventions:


Ensemble contestability features  are put forward as a way to not only enable but incentivize the collective contestability of algorithmic tools. Bottom-up data trusts’ are another example of the kind of infrastructure that needs to be in place if we are to counter increasingly powerful habits of civic retrenchement. 


Material from the book was previously published as an article in The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.


The emphasis on the non-deliberative underpinnings of ethical agency complements my previous book, Legal norms and normativity: an essay in genealogy (that book won the Peter Birks second prize for outstanding legal scholarship 2008).

  • A. Giannopoulou, J. Ausloos, S. Delacroix and H. Janssen, "Intermediating Data Rights Exercises: the role of legal mandates", International Data Privacy Law, 12 (4), 2022, 316-331
  • S. Delacroix, "Professional Responsibility: Conceptual Rescue and Plea for Reform", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 42 (1), 2022, 1-26
  • S. Delacroix, "Diachronic Interpretability and Automated Systems", Journal of Cross-disciplinary Research in Computational Law, 1 (1), 2022
  • S. Delacroix, “Computing Machinery, Surprise and Originality”, Philosophy & Technology, 34, 2021, 1195-1211
  • B. Wagner and S. Delacroix, “Constructing a Mutually Supportive Interface between Ethics and Regulation”, Computer Law and Security Review, vol. 40, 2021
  • S. Delacroix and N. Lawrence, “Bottom-up data Trusts: disturbing the one-size-fits-all approach to data governance”, International Data Privacy Law, 9 (4), 2019, 236-252, doi: 10.1093/idpl/ipz014
  • S. Delacroix, “At a cross-roads? The courts’ shifting apprehension of the vulnerability at stake in the lay-healthcare provider relationship”, Journal of Medical Law and Ethics, 2019(2) 
  • S. Delacroix, “Understanding normativity: the impact of culturally-loaded explanatory ambitions”, Revus, 37, 2019, doi: 10.4000/revus.4773
  • S. Delacroix, “Computer systems fit for the legal profession”, Legal Ethics, 21(2), 2019, 119-135, doi: 10.1080/1460728x.2018.1551702
  • O. Drewett, G. Hann, M. Fyfe, P. Gillies, C. Sher, S. Delacroix, X. Pan, C. Fertleman, `A Discussion of the Use of Virtual Reality for Training Healthcare Practitioners to Recognise Child Protection Issues’, Frontiers in Public Health, 2019, doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2019.00255
  • X. Pan, C. Fertleman, P. Pleasance, D. Swapp, O. Drewett, T. Collingwoode-William, B. Congdon, S. Delacroix: “A study of professional awareness using immersive virtual reality: the responses of general practitioners to child safeguarding concerns”, Frontiers in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, 2018, doi: 10.3389/frobt.2018.00080
  • C. Fertleman, P. Aubugeau-Williams, C. Sher, A.N. Lim, S. Lumley, S. Delacroix, and X. Pan. "A Discussion of virtual reality as a New tool for training Healthcare Professionals." Frontiers in public health 6 (2018): 44, doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2018.00044
  • S. Delacroix, “Law and Habits”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 37 (3), 1 September 2017, Pages 660–686 
  • X. Pan, M. Slater, A. Beacco, X. Navarro, D. Swapp, J. Hale, P. Forbes, C. Denvir, A. F. de C. Hamilton, S. Delacroix, “The Responses of Medical General Practitioners to Unreasonable Patient Demand for Antibiotics – A study of medical ethics using immersive virtual reality”, PLoS ONE, 11(2), 2016
  • S. Delacroix, “From constitutional words to statehood? The Palestinian case”, Cambridge International Law Journal, 3(4), 2014, 1164-1181, doi: 10.7574/cjicl.03.04244
  • S. Delacroix, “Drafting a constitution for a `Country of words': the Palestinian case”, Middle East Law and Governance, 4 (2), 2012, 72-91 [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, “Meta-ethical agnosticism in legal theory: mapping a way out”, Jurisprudence, 1 (2), 2010, 225-240 [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, “You'd better be committed: legal norms and normativity”, American Journal of Jurisprudence, 54 (1), 2009, 117-132 [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, “Schmitt's critique of Kelsenian normativism”, Ratio Juris, 18(1), 2005, 30-45 [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, “Hart's and Kelsen's understandings of normativity contrasted”, Ratio Juris, 17(4), 2004, 501-520, [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, “Montaigne's inquiry into the sources of normativity”, The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 16(2), 2003, 271-286, [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, “Du silence au bruit: possibilités de discours sur les origines fondatrices du système juridique”, Revue interdisciplinaire d'études juridiques, 47, 2001, 153-177


  • S. Delacroix and J. Montgomery, 'From Research Data Ethics Principles to Practice: Data Trusts as a Governance Tool', forthcoming in Pogrebna, G. & Hills, T. (2023) eds. Handbook of Behavioural Data Science, Cambridge University Press [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, J. Pineau and J. Montgomery, 'Democratising the digital revolution: the role of data governance', in Reflections on AI for Humanity, Braunschweig & Ghallab (eds.), Springer, 2021, pp. 40-52 [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, ‘Automated Systems and the Need for Change’, in Is Law Computable?, Christopher Markou & Simon Deakin (Eds), Hart Publishing, 2020, pp. 161-175, [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, “Preserving us from regulatory power? Legal normativity and the possibility of agency”, in C. Bezemek, M. Potacs and A. Somek (eds), Normativism and Anti-Normativism in Legal Theory, Vienna Lectures in Legal Philosophy, Hart Publishing, 2020, [pre-publication version available here]
  • S.Delacroix and C. Denvir, "Virtually Teaching Ethics? Experiencing the discrepancy between abstract ethical stands and actual behaviour using Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR)”, in C. Denvir (ed.), Modernising Legal Education, CUP, 2020, [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix and M. Veale, 'Smart Technologies and Our Sense of Self: Going Beyond Epistemic Counter-Profiling, in Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, Mireille Hildebrandt & Kieron O'Hara (eds.), 2020, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., [pre-publication version available here]
  • S. Delacroix, 'From agency-enhancement intentions to profile-based optimisation tools: what is lost in translation’ in M. Hildebrandt (ed.), Being Profiled. Cogitas Ergo Sum, Amsterdam University Press, 2018, [pre-publication version available here]
  • "Making law bind: legal normativity as a dynamic concept", in M. Del Mar (ed.), New waves in philosophy of law, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 147-160, [pre-publication version available here]
  • "Tracing a genealogy of legal normativity: responsibility, authorship and contingency", in S. Bertea and G. Pavlakos (eds), The Normativity of Law, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2011
  • “Six paths to vertigo-free legal theory”, in R. Harrisson (ed.), Current Legal Issues: Law and Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2007
  • “The rule of law”, in Iain MacKenzie (ed.), Political concepts: a reader and a guide, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, 314-322


  • S. Delacroix and N. Lawrence, Letter to the Financial Times: ‘Legal instruments exist to empower us, the data subjects’
  • S. Delacroix and N. Lawrence, Letter to the Financial Times: ‘Intelligent sharing of data can save lives’


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