British Justice Secretary David Lammy unveiled on February 26, 2026, an ambitious plan to modernize criminal courts, including AI transcription, 'blitz courts,' and the use of prison vans in bus lanes to speed up transfers. The goal: to clear the massive judicial backlog in the UK.
In the United States, Los Angeles has launched an AI pilot program to help process pending cases in the judicial system. AI is used to sort and analyze files, identify priority cases, and assist judges in legal research, without replacing human decision-making.
Estonia remains a pioneer in digital justice. The country has experimented with AI systems to handle small civil disputes, although the scope remains limited and the human judge retains the final say. The Estonian model inspires other European countries in their reflections on judicial digitalization.
Algorithmic bias remains the primary subject of concern. The American tool COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions), used to assess recidivism risk, has been criticized for racial biases documented by ProPublica. New generations of tools incorporate auditing and correction mechanisms.
In France, the Constitutional Council recalled in 2019 that 'any judicial decision must be made by a human being.' AI is used as a decision-support tool (legal research, statistical analysis of past decisions), but the principle of the human judge remains a pillar of French and European law.
