The recent Law & Society Association Annual Meeting brought judicial thought leaders together to discuss innovation in courts with many of the discussions centered on the need for courts to evolve while maintaining a human-centered approach to justice
CHICAGO — I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Law & Society Association’s annual conference, joining a panel of judges from federal, state, and international courts. We came together to talk about something close to all our hearts: innovation in the judiciary. I’ve spoken on many panels and at many conferences, but there was something special about this one.
Maybe it was the shared sense of purpose among the judges — each one of us from different walks of life but all deeply committed to creative thinking and a forward-looking approach to our work. Or maybe it was the audience — scholars from all over the world doing extremely interesting research into judicial innovation and AI. Or perhaps it was the topic: we discussed why and how courts must evolve. We talked about the value of seeing beyond tradition — not for the sake of novelty, but to better serve the people who come before us in our courts. We reflected on the importance of keeping humans at the center of everything we do, even when the dispute feels removed from its human elements.
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We also reminded ourselves — and each other — that judges are human, too. We are fallible. We have good days and not-so-good days. We get tired. We carry burdens. We miss things. We don’t always get it right. And that’s why grace matters — the grace we hope to offer litigants, and the grace we so appreciate when others offer it to us.
AI takes center stage
Of course, no conversation about the future of courts would be complete without talking about AI. It was fascinating to be in conversations with academics from all over the world who are not just thinking about AI in the legal profession but deeply researching its potential impact. One of the most thought-provoking moments of the weekend came from an academic who shared her research into judicial decision-making. She’s been studying the disconnect between what judges think they’re doing and what they’re actually doing. Her work led her to question whether AI could be more reliable when it comes to rendering judgments.
That question stuck with me. I, for one, am not ready to hand over judicial decision-making to machines. I believe AI is a tool to be used cautiously, and we should constantly examine and re-examine its place.
Still, I was intrigued by her research, and other research, as well. For example, a study from the University of Chicago Law School compared human judges to AI judges and found that AI was more consistent and loyal to precedent. Human judges, by contrast, routinely deviated.
What should we make of that?
Is consistency the highest value? Or is deviation, when grounded in context and human empathy, sometimes the better path? Maybe the answer is both. Maybe the value of human judgment lies in knowing when consistency is called for and when a case demands something more.
Building the public trust
Another area of research and topic of discussion was public trust. Could increased automation and AI integration in courts erode public trust? Or will the public become increasingly comfortable with the consistency and reliability that AI might offer?
Another group of researchers raised interesting questions about overreliance on a technology that is fundamentally misunderstood. For them, AI is not intelligence at all — at least not in the way we think about intelligence. Thus, our attempts to shoehorn AI into our workflows, which are necessarily designed around human intelligence, could have unintended and problematic consequences.
And maybe that’s what made the weekend feel so meaningful. It wasn’t just a series of panels, it was a dialogue. It was an exchange of ideas, a space where questions were more valuable than their answers, where disagreement didn’t divide but instead deepened the inquiry, where judges and scholars came together not to defend the status quo, or run heedlessly into the future, but to imagine what justice might look like tomorrow.
These are the types of dialogues that will help us decide what must change, what must endure, and how we can build our future together.
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