Privatization, Prisons, Democracy, and Human Rights: The Need to Extend the Province of Administrative Law

Administrative law has an important role to play when it comes to providing democratic forums for deliberation and decisionmaking on a wide range of issues. In this paper, I will argue that domestic administrative law potentially offers a means for addressing human rights problems arising from privatization, particularly privatization in the United States dealing with prisons. As this paper will argue, creating opportunities for citizen involvement in what otherwise might be thought of as private decisionmaking processes may help prevent human rights problems before they occur. At a minimum, such an approach can create the forums and information necessary for meaningful and timely politics to develop around issues that, once privatized, can all too easily fall from public view. To make these arguments, this paper will focus exclusively on U.S. law as a case study of these issues.