AI in Courts: Judicial Values in the Age of AI

ongoing

While predictive and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies promise to increase efficiency and accuracy in judicial decision-making, few have holistically questioned their impact on the judiciary and justice system. Widespread adoption of AI tools to assist - or even replace - judges, poses significant challenges to the values of open justice, transparency, accountability, and equality before the law. This project aims to expand the knowledge of judicial use of AI tools and their interaction with core judicial values in the EU; provide a new framework for tackling novel emerging harms from the use of AI technologies in courts, and extend EU’s legal capacity in empirical mixed methods research. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories of judicial decision-making and critical AI studies, mixed method design and comparative EU, UK and US experiences, the project combines comparative doctrinal analysis with expert interviews with judges, lawyers, policy-makers. Project impact will be secured via academic publications, conference presentations, public communication via social and traditional media, expert workshops. Intended outcomes include a normative framework for the future development of public law in EU to govern the use of AI technologies in the courtrooms, thereby placing EU research at the forefront of a novel field of study, contributing to the EU AI strategy and UN SDGs, and promoting EU leadership in a fast-moving area of social and legal change, increasing equality, offering reduced risk and long-term economic and social benefits.