Background: The term ‘hard cases’ trace back to Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart who was one of the first legal philosophers who directly used it in his works and Ronald Myles Dworkin to whom the development and establishment of this concept in legal language is linked. Even though these two legal philosophers in one of the most famous - The Hart–Dworkin – legal debate couldn’t agree on certain things, they both agreed that when dealing with hard cases, there is a need to act creatively in order to resolve such a case properly. The division of cases into easy ones and hard ones gradually lost its popularity, even in legal theory, but perhaps it can be resurrected and used these challenging times to help meet the challenges prompted by technology? Methods: This paper analyses the dichotomy of hard and easy cases as well as circumstances relating to the courts’ decision-making processes in such cases. The essay examines whether the solutions proposed by legal positivism (such as applying syllogisms and precedents) are sufficient to deal with easy cases. The paper also examines what factors analysed by legal realists have an impact on judges while making decisions in hard cases (for example, psychological factors, such as hindsight bias, intuition, hunches, the anchor effect, laziness, unwillingness to take responsibility, or the gambler’s fallacy, as well as social factors, like upbringing, life experience, social relations, gender, age, education, etc.). Given that the article is theoretical in nature, logical, systemic, teleological methods dominate. Both descriptive method and scientific research method were used as well. Results and Conclusions: The author concludes that easy cases should eventually be delegated to artificial intelligence to resolve, whereas hard cases will remain in the competence of human judges, at least until technological development reaches a certain level.

The Covid-19 pandemic mainly affected those target groups who, due to the nature of their duties, were unable to isolate themselves. The consequences of such work are psychological tension with various symptoms. In this situation, the formation of a system for localizing its consequences becomes a very important task. Three parts are distinguished: a quantitative assessment of the scale and nature of the pandemic, a quantitative assessment of the need to localize the consequences and the analysis of current system; third, the formation of a monitoring system. The chosen system allows verbal assessments to be transformed into quantitative ones. Based on it, the aggregated values of seven essential signs of psychological stress in the target groups (medical and social workers, police, customs officers, educators, pharmacists, and entrepreneurs) were identified: anxiety (0.80), stress (0.78), aggression (0.63), insomnia (0.62), persistent fatigue (0.61), depression (0.56), sadness (0.49). The application of the methodology allows forming a monitoring system considering the scale of the pandemic impact and the psychological consequences. The mental distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been shown to be characterized by such negative effects as anxiety, stress, insomnia, persistent fatigue, depression and persistent sadness. The study revealed that the major shortcomings in the system developed for localizing the negative effects are as follows: insufficient efforts of state institutions even in the case the negative effects are getting worse; inadequate provision of psychological assistance conditioned by unreasonably high prices and deficient legal framework.

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Background: Technology promises the provision of public services to be more efficient, transparent, cheaper, and faster, but current issues associated with various technologies, such as, inter alia, discrimination, the ‘black-box’ problem, or cybersecurity issues raise concerns about potential legal risks. Accordingly, the question of whether democracies survive potential threats to legal norms arises. Various EU institutions express the position that we must promote technological applications but, at the same time, ensure adequate protection of human rights. However, sometimes this line is very thin – thus, it is necessary to examine how, and which technological applications should be applied in the public sector in order not to violate human rights requirements. The analysis of the proper assurance of the principle of the rule of law where certain technologies are implemented in the public sector will help to answer the questions of whether the chosen legal regulation in the implementation of these functions of the state is appropriate and whether the chosen method of technology integration complies with the principle of the rule of law. Methods: The following methods were used in the article to research potential modern technology risks to the rule of law principle. The systematic method was useful when interpreting the mutual interaction of legal norms. With the help of this method, systemic connections with other legal norms and other sources of law were assessed. With the help of the teleological method of legal interpretation, the goals and objectives of the rule of law principle were determined. The comparative method was used to study the experience of foreign countries regarding various aspects of technology in the public sector. Results and conclusions: The paper concludes that the supremacy of the rule of law must be ensured when applying any kind of technology in the public sector. The paper also concludes that different rule of law elements might be at risk in certain areas of the public sector where technologies are incorporated, such as automated administrative orders, the risk-assessment tool COMPAS, and robot-judges.

By analyzing various sources of law, this paper provides an assessment of the method of automated administrative order that is used in Lithuania, its potential problematic risks, determined due to the chosen legal regulation, as well as the European vision of integrating technology in the implementation of the public functions of the state. After evaluating the provisions of both national law and European Union law, a proposal regarding how to improve the chosen method of incorporating algorithms into the process of adopting certain administrative orders is made.