Contribution to the handbook
Priority · Assessed 2026-10-27
The distinction between judging outcomes, process, or both is consequential to evaluating public decisions. The evidence preserves objections to relying on either results or process alone and leaves the balancing rule open.
Does this challenge the goal?
In-scope gap
It explores one account of legitimacy while leaving the handbook’s competing values and mechanisms open.
The evidence describes result-focused, process-focused, and combined views, but does not settle which outcomes count or how conflicts should be weighed.
Why this category?
- meaningful normative alternatives
- legitimacy and accountability
- unresolved tradeoff
These are conceptual positions and examples from one shared source root, not an agreed legitimacy standard or a settled way to resolve conflicts.
This is an AI assessment of contribution to the goal, separate from whether the question has an answer.
Making and interpreting laws →
Judging situations and resolving disputes →
Authority, accountability and resilience →
Tests, stop conditions and unresolved work →
Read the exploration goalExplain what makes a decision process acceptable under a result-focused view.
What we can say so far
Under a result-focused view, a decision process is acceptable when it achieves valuable aims through its consequences—for example, reducing crime or improving well-being. The account does not specify which outcomes should count or how competing outcomes should be weighed.
What remains open
- No rule is supplied for selecting or weighing outcomes when they conflict.
Conditions and limits
- The source describes the result-focused view but does not settle which outcomes are valuable or how they should be weighed.
- The evidence is an interpretation of the author manuscript available through an accessible mirror, not the publisher typeset version; it is not independent new evidence.
Objections to consider
- The evidence identifies ambiguity about what belongs among a decision's results and leaves the weighing of process virtues against results unsettled. That limitation does not negate the basic result-focused criterion, but the corpus supplies no rule to resolve the ambiguity.
- The author’s warning that outcome-only judgment could excuse cruel treatment is a critique of the view’s desirability, not a different account of what the view uses as its acceptability criterion.
Evidence and related ideas
Supporting evidence, qualifications and context play different roles in this answer.
supports
Judging by results A result-focused approach treats a decision process as acceptable because it achieves valuable aims, such as reducing crime or improving well-being.
Directly states that the result-focused approach treats a process as acceptable insofar as it achieves valuable aims.
The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation
Read full source: The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation (opens in a new tab) ↗Read source discussion: The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation →
qualifies
Where process and results overlap The author says it can be unclear which effects belong under “results” and which belong under “process.” For example, it is unclear whether a witness’s longer-term suffering should count among a decision’s results. An outcome-focused view might include it because inhumane treatment seems to undermine a process’s legitimacy. The author argues that a combined approach can treat the witness’s treatment as relevant either way, though it may still need to weigh process virtues against results.