Employers across our economy are
increasingly using new, technologically sophisticated tools to make decisions
about which employees to hire, promote, and fire, as well as decisions about
performance evaluation and pay. Some of these tools draw on unusual data
sources; others use new “big data” methods to mine data for relevant
correlations and inferences. How are legal actors—employers, employees,
judges—supposed to decide whether the actions employers take with the help of
these new tools constitute discrimination? Employment discrimination law is
only beginning to come to grips with this question, which raises fascinating
questions of its own about how best to apply theories such as disparate
treatment and disparate impact to these novel decision-making methods. This
panel will bring together many of the leading scholars in this rapidly-emerging
field from both inside and outside the legal academy to evaluate these
questions.
Business meeting at program conclusion.