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Operational Agency: A Permeable Legal Fiction for Tracing Culpability in AI Systems

Identification

Clé publique

doi:10.2139/ssrn.5680063

Auteurs

Anirban Mukherjee · Hannah H. Chang

Année déclarée

2026

Langue déclarée

en

Type source

article

Première détection

2026-11-09T19:04:47.988831+00:00

Dernière observation des métadonnées

2026-11-09T19:04:47.988831+00:00

Dernière vérification HTTP

Non effectuée

Institutions déclarées par la source

Singapore Management University

Pays d’affiliation déclarés

SG

Résumé documentaire — langue originale

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood—a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)—a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework—and Operational Agency Graph (OAG)—a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI’s observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these characteristics in a causal graph to trace and apportion culpability among developers, fine-tuners, deployers, and users. Drawing on corporate criminal liability, the innocent-agent doctrine, and secondary and vicarious liability frameworks, the Article shows how OA and OAG strengthen existing doctrines. Across five real-world case studies spanning tort, civil rights, constitutional law, and antitrust, it demonstrates how they offer courts a principled evidentiary method to address issues ranging from autonomous vehicle collisions to algorithmic price-fixing. OA and OAG provide legislatures and industry with a clear conceptual approach to maintaining human accountability as technology becomes more autonomous, without conferring legal personhood on AI.

Identifiants

OPENALEX

W7170075808

DOI

10.2139/ssrn.5680063 · 10.25172/smustlr.29.1.4

Repères documentaires

Famille documentaire

Doctrine

Types déclarés par les sources

article

Les mentions d’entités ne constituent pas une preuve de reconnaissance juridique. La juridiction étudiée est distincte du pays d’affiliation des auteurs.

Sources

OpenAlex · Document 1 · Document 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5680063
• DOI · https://doi.org/10.25172/smustlr.29.1.4
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W7170075808

Statut documentaire

Pertinence à examiner

Bibliothèque

Cette identité n’est pas encore intégrée à la Bibliothèque juridique.