Reclaiming Constitutional Authority of Algorithmic Power

TL;DR

This paper argues that AI governance should be grounded in constitutional principles of lawful delegation, participatory authority, and individual resistance, moving beyond current rights-based or experimental models.

Contribution

It proposes a novel constitutional framework for algorithmic power based on covenantal authority, emphasizing lawful delegation, community consent, and resistance rights.

Findings

Analyzes limitations of European and American AI governance models.

Proposes a constitutional approach rooted in covenantal authority.

Operationalizes principles through federalism, nondelegation, and accountability.

Abstract

Whether and how to govern AI is no longer a question of technical regulation. It is a question of constitutional authority. Across jurisdictions, algorithmic systems now perform functions once reserved to public institutions: allocating welfare, determining legal status, mediating access to housing, employment, and healthcare. These are not merely administrative operations. They are acts of rule. Yet the dominant models of AI governance fail to confront this reality. The European approach centers on rights-based oversight, presenting its regulatory framework as a principled defense of human dignity. The American model relies on decentralized experimentation, treating fragmentation as a proxy for democratic legitimacy. Both, in different ways, evade the structural question: who authorizes algorithmic power, through what institutions, and on what terms. This Article offers an alternative. Drawing from early modern Reformed political thought, it reconstructs a constitutional framework grounded in covenantal authority and the right of lawful resistance. It argues that algorithmic governance must rest on three principles. First, that all public power must be lawfully delegated through participatory authorization. Second, that authority must be structured across representative communities with the standing to consent, contest, or refuse. Third, that individuals retain a constitutional right to resist systems that impose orthodoxy or erode the domain of conscience. These principles are then operationalized through doctrinal analysis of federalism, nondelegation, compelled speech, and structural accountability. On this view, the legitimacy of algorithmic governance turns not on procedural safeguards or policy design, but on whether it reflects a constitutional order in which power is authorized by the governed, constrained by law, and answerable to those it affects.