Automated Judicial Decision Making

Gurjot Singh Chatrath, Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA

ABSTRACT

This research paper explores the realm of integrating artificial intelligence in statutory interpretation and judicial decision-making with a focus on how AI could streamline and make more precise judicial findings and decisions in the legal field. Statutory interpretation is crucial to the application of laws because it requires judges to weigh the legislative intent of what was written against the legal principles that must stand juxtaposed against the socio- economic needs of the people. AI tools can help in the automation of legal research, pattern recognition, and predictive analysis to aid the judge in sifting through all the necessary information and legal precedence to make more informed judgments. The research mainly focuses on the promise of AI to improve research for legal scenarios or interpretation of dubious laws. However, it throws forth certain ethical issues, for instance, the issue of bias in AI systems, "black box" problem, and how AI entails social inequalities, unless timely regulated. The paper is of the view that though AI would rationalize the decision-making process, it cannot replace human judges because judgments need moral reasoning besides keeping in view the context of society. Some suggestions suggested as countermeasures include increased transparency, diversified training data for AI, regular auditing for the detection of biases and their mitigation, and so on. AI is viewed more as an aid towards the human judges rather than a replacement, bringing justice and keeping to the base values of fairness and impartiality for everyone involved.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, statutory interpretation, judicial decision- making, predictive analysis, legal research, AI bias, transparency, automated decision-making, ethics in AI.