Navigating Courtrooms In The Era Ef AI: Towards Equitable International Litigation And Arbitration – OpEd |
There is a tectonic shift in our lived experiences today – beyond the rise of regionalism and mini-lateralism, is the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). IBM defines it as, “technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy”. Legal reasoning and the practice of justice remains one of the most fundamental tasks of human society, as it sets the tone for governance and the people’s faith in institutions. It requires judgement not clouded by opinions, preferences or preconceived notions – in simpler words, a mind devoid of bias.
A study done by TR Institute revealed that across the world judicial operations were already being spearheaded by AI tools; a trend that will only inflate with the passage of time. As algorithms waltz into all aspects of our lives, including the courtroom, it is important to investigate and analyze the intersection between AI, litigation and international arbitration – as it will weather the currents of discernment and the delivery of justice in the future to come.
The integration of Artificial Intelligence into litigation and international arbitration should also be understood not merely as a technological development, but fundamentally as an institutional one. The central issue is not simply how AI tools operate, but how their use is framed within existing legal structures, ensuring that decision-making processes remain accountable, reasoned and subject to appropriate procedural safeguards.
In recognition of this unique dynamic between the world of codes and the corridors of law, the Global Academy for Future Governance’s (GAFG) event on March 26th provided participants, policy makers – practitioners and academia, with an opportunity to dissect this emerging discourse. This is in continuance with GAFG’s initiatives for preparing government officials and emerging changemakers with AI literacy, such as the two-month-long flagship program ‘Understanding AI and Robotics’ and the similarly-formatted upcoming flagship program on AI and Life Sciences. (For further reference on the GAFG’s pioneer work on AI, see the eBook: https://online.fliphtml5.com/Global-Academy-for-Future-Governance/Understanding-AI-Robotics—GAFG/ &https://archive.org/details/understanding-ai-robotics-gafg_202603 .)
Concepted and moderated by prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic, GAFG hosted a sundry of distinguished keynotes such as Honorable Justice Ernest Petric, former President of the Constitutional Court of Slovenia, Pascal Lamy, former EU Commissioner and Director General of World Trade Organization. The substantive part was afterwards covered by Dr. Fernando Messias, a Lisbon-based lawyer, arbitrator and mediator, and the author of ‘The Practice of Law and International Arbitration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’ book.
Participants of the event, spanning across various geographies and fields, played an equally important role in the panel discussion, raising questions on institutional integrity, AI’s moral abilities and how they have noticed the same trends happening across judiciaries in their home countries.
Fundamentals of Jurisprudence
The idea of law is synonymous with the concepts of rules and regulations. However, these rules don’t exist in a vacuum, rather they acquire value only when external logic such as the human mind, in the form of Judges and Arbitrators, validate them.
What separates the legal mind from a common mind? Beyond the well-established principles of fairness and objectivity, it is the ability to be in constant pursuit of the ‘common good’ which characterizes a legal practitioner’s thought process. The ‘common good’ is not only something generalizable, but also rooted in stability with the purpose of materializing law and order. In this sense, law can be seen as both- the provenance as well as derivative of morality.
It is the deliverance of justice that builds a city, region and even a nation’s soft infrastructure. Only when there is fear among the wrongdoers, and faith among the citizens – is a community’s functioning truly operational. This translates into guaranteed safety of being outdoors late in the night, no anxiety of theft regarding one’s possessions and an overall greater sense of well-being.
During the session, Pascal Lamy had emphasized how trust and cooperation needs to extend beyond borders and instead proselytize at a global scale, highlighting the need for “polylateralism – as a continuance to multilateralism”. As it is not enough to have trust within nations anymore, as much as it is to have that among nations – due to the large movements of people, capital and ideas.
The Mitigation of Litigation
However, the practice of law today is compromised across several grounds. Although there exist institutional mechanisms, their efficiency has been compromised through the stockpiling pendency of cases, corruption within and the deliverance of verdicts without adequate evidence.
In the past few years, the legitimacy of international litigation and arbitration have been particularly challenged by the new global order. The world has seen continuous breach of international humanitarian law with surmounting numbers of civilian causalities from various conflict laden zones – challenging the very nucleus of the Westphalian world order, that promised mutual respect for sovereignty, statehood and dignity post the Thirty Years War.
To add to these frictions, is also the dawn of artificial intelligence in our courtrooms. The first big step towards legal futurism and innovation was taken by Estonia – with its pilot project of an ‘AI Judge’ in 2019, who was programmed to solve small cases under € 7000, in order to make time and space for human judges and mediators to focus on more complex cases.
Honourable Justice. Ernest Petric, the former President of the Constitutional Court of Slovenia, had added that their country too was digitizing the legal process, to analyse patterns and texts, which are otherwise a cumbersome task for human mediators to perform.
The same trend of courtroom automation has been observed across Global South – with countries such as Egypt, Azerbaijan and India following in the same, particularly in the domains of case management and legal research. However, the intertwining of law and technology goes beyond the industrial concern of ‘increasing efficiency’ and rather poses several questions on the grounds of socio-political and ethical equity.
The programming and computing of all AI models are undertaken by human minds filled with biases – as Louis Althusser had famously said, “we are born in an echo-chamber of ideologies”. Which implies that the boundaries and distinctness between the self and the other pervade every thought, perception and decisions that we undertake.
Towards Responsible AI in Courtrooms
The event’s panellist Dr. Fernando Messias had added that across the world AI is being utilized in the three domains of i) evidence and data analysis, ii) case organization and document reviews and lastly iii) decision support. He also recognized that today AI is evolving faster than law’s ability to regulate it, with the greatest risk being data opacity. In light of this he proposed for the need of international minimum standards, responsibility backed by clarity and public transparency with access to decision making process of AI tools.
As GAFG argued and discussed for the past period throughout its actions and programs, even the UNESCO’s Athens Roundtable of 2025 had released Guidelines for the Use of AI Systems in Courts and Tribunals, which stress upon the need for non-discrimination, equality and procedural fairness.
The above brought participants to the concluding segment of this enlightening event: The use of AI in courtrooms without compromising on the human element. In the coming years, International Litigation and Arbitration must be able to balance out AI than rely on it. This could take place in the following ways –
Translation of texts and documents: AI trained on specific language models could aid in making certain documents of evidence accessible through real time transliteration, which of course has to be overseen by a human expert.
Case scheduling: as many courts are plagued with backlogs, AI could assist by setting precise dates for hearings and verdict deliverance in order to avoid the piling of cases.
Right to challenge: both parties to a dispute must be given procedural safeguards and grievance redressal mechanisms to appeal against AI driven outputs in terms of evidence assessment, risk analysis and outcomes.
Access to information: right of all persons to know the database and composition of the AI model, along with third party led algorithmic audits which must be made public.
The Global Advisory GAFG, its actions and the event as such acted as a torchbearer, shedding spotlight on a policy issue yet to be discussed and navigated, but one that will be fundamental to the operationality of the human existence. As we enter into an era of technologically assisted judicial systems, it is imperative models don’t take precedence over morality, and that algorithms remain subservient to human judgement. For justice delayed may be justice denied, but justice wholly mechanized is justice eroded.