Artificial Intelligence: It has become a big part of the everyday lives of a lot of people around the world. It first started with asking simple questions and then you would be astonished by the answers it could give you. At this point AI is not a new anymore and it has started to make an impact in the workspace.
I have a job at Wolters Kluwer, a big publisher, and about a year ago we launched our own AI, so that costumers could use an AI to search through our books. I see lawyers using the AI, which saves them a lot of time. You can now search through judgments in half an hour, where before it would take a whole day.
This is great, but it made me start to think, what if judges would use AI to help them in their judgment?
In the Netherlands it has already been used before, for example by the court of Rotterdam in a criminal law case, but it was used as a supportive language tool. The AI did not make or help make the judgment. I think most people would not have a problem with that.
In 2024 there was a Dutch Judge who used AI (ChatGPT) to help their judgment. He used it to determine how long the lifespan of solar panel was and what the average cost of electricity was at that point. The question is, do we want this. Do we want AI to make decisions in the court room, which has such a big impact on people’s lives. Should not experts make this type of decisions, just somebody how knows a lot about the subject and he comes to the court room to explain it to everybody. In this case that was the right thing, because one of the parties appealed the decision and guess what, the AI got it wrong and the expert (in appeal) told everybody the right numbers.
The usage of Artificial Intelligence could have a lot of benefits. It works a lot more efficiently then we humans do. When you have a very big case with a lot of documents, you could save a lot of time by letting the AI search through it.
AI also has the potential to promote greater equality in the legal system, as it can identify similar cases more quickly and so it could contribute to more consistent judgments.
Lastly, all around the world there are staffing shortages in court rooms. In the Netherlands we need around 800 extra judges and 200 more prosecutors. In the USA there is a staffing shortage in 68% of the state courts. AI could fill up this huge gap, by doing a lot of preparatory work (like the court of Rotterdam did). This way the huge pressure on courts all around the world could be lifted.
But nothing everything is great about the usage of AI. AI is not always really transparent and it could make up things to give an answer to your question. You always have to keep checking if the output by the AI is correct and truthful. In 2025 a lawyer from the state of Georgia was fined, because they had used AI and the AI made up a case, which did not exist.
Of course there is also the ethical problem. Do we really want to use AI in a court room? A place where decisions are being made which have such a big impact on peoples live. Is it not better if humans took these big decisions. Would the judge not lose it’s authority if AI would start to help make these judgments.
To conclude, AI brings us a lot of chances: it could make us work more efficiently, it could promote greater equality and it could lift the pressure of staffing shortages. However, how do we know if the AI is unbiased, truthful and do we want to lose the human touch on such big decisions? For now, maybe it is better if AI only supported judges as a language model for now. How will justice really look when artificial intelligence incorporates itself into our courts?
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