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70 U. Toronto L.J. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/utlj70 and id is 1 raw text is: UNITY IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER? REASONS FOR DECISION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ONTARIO WORKS PROGRAMt This article interrogates reasons for decision, a central concept in Canadian public law schol- arship. Using spatiotemporal scale as an analytical tool, it shows how unified reasons may be more easily recognized at the scale of judicially reviewable administrative decisions common to public law scholarship, yet elusive at the scale offront-line decision making. It then investigates how a variety of mechanisms, including data entries and notes, function together behind the front lines of social assistance agencies in the province of Ontario. Drawing on qualitative research into caseworkers' decision-making practices, this article illustrates how the `reasons' for a particular administrative decision may be multiplied and fractured across software pro- grams, emails, and physical case files. Further; it demonstrates how notes are both more and less than reasons. As they perform three intern/al communicative tasks central to ad/innistrative governance - recording evidence, explainin<g decisions, and justifying potentially contentious outcomes to other administrative insiders - notes facilitate decision-making practices that en- sure institutionally acceptable outcomes are reached, even as one note may not fully capture the logic underlying a particular decision. Ultimately, this article aims to motivate theoretically inclined legal scholars to reconsider the concept of reasons for decision in light of the deci- sion-making practices of front-line administrators. Keywords: front-line workers, new public management, public law, reasons for decision, socio-legal studies, algorithmic systems Reasons for administrative decisions are central to public law doctrines and theories of governance. Not only does a reason-articulating practice indicate whether the process used to reach an administrative decision was fair, but the reasons themselves suggest whether a decision, in substance, is acceptable. The role of reasons is best fulfilled when reasons are produced by a single human decision maker and are relatively accessible to outsiders. Yet, for some time now, decision-making tasks have been dispersed among multiple human and non- human actors and across administrative agencies, private actors, and arm's length * Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada t An early version of this article was awarded the Richard Hart Prize for early career schol- arship at the University of Cambridge Public Law Conference (2016). I would like to thank Denise Reaume, Audrey Macklin, David Dyzenhaus, Carol Harlow, Richard Stacey, and Mariana Valverde for insightful feedback on preliminary versions of this article as well as participants at the University of Toronto's Legal Theory Workshop (2017) and two anonymous peer reviewers for their thorough comments. This research was generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. (Winter 2020) 70 UTLJ © UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS DOI: 10.3138/utlj.2018-0022 Jennifer Raso*

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