Newsletter Issue 88: Governments consider AI judges to reduce cost and delay, yet risk undermining fairness, transparency, accountability, and public trust in justice.
Efficiency becomes a problem when courts start treating cases as items to process rather than disputes that require explanation and responsibility. The constitutional role of a court is not just to reach an outcome as we know it to be, but to show how and why power is exercised the way it is. When speed and volume (using an LLM) take priority, reasoning (the stare decisis) gets deferred to the background, discretion will naturally start to narrow, and people will stop feeling heard. At that point, courts still function, but they no longer perform their constitutional role. That’s an unfortunate scenario to even contemplate.
But at what point does efficiency in adjudication undermine the constitutional purpose of courts?
Efficiency becomes a problem when courts start treating cases as items to process rather than disputes that require explanation and responsibility. The constitutional role of a court is not just to reach an outcome as we know it to be, but to show how and why power is exercised the way it is. When speed and volume (using an LLM) take priority, reasoning (the stare decisis) gets deferred to the background, discretion will naturally start to narrow, and people will stop feeling heard. At that point, courts still function, but they no longer perform their constitutional role. That’s an unfortunate scenario to even contemplate.