Introduction

The legal world has long been known as a field resistant to change, bound by its traditions. Scenes of robed lawyers, paper files, and the sounds of typewriters/keyboards in courtrooms have remained unchanged for a long time. However, with the data explosion and technological breakthroughs of the 21st century, a digital revolution is taking place in courtrooms as well. Cases are no longer just a few pages of petitions; hundreds of pages of social media outputs, digital evidence, and financial records are entering case files. This flood of information is causing what we might call an "access to justice crisis": cases are dragging on for years, judges are overwhelmed by workload, and justice is delayed. It is at this exact point that artificial intelligence has entered the judicial agenda as both a "savior" and a "challenger." In this article, we will examine the use of artificial intelligence in the judiciary—if you're ready, let's begin!

AI Applications in Courts Around the World

China: Digital Courts and Virtual Judges

Today, the country where artificial intelligence is most comprehensively used in the judiciary is undoubtedly China. China began establishing internet courts starting in 2017 to deal with the massive caseload. For example, the Internet Court established in Hangzhou handles digital-related cases such as e-commerce and copyright entirely online. This court even has what we might call an "AI judge" system: Parties participate in hearings via video conference, and a black-robed virtual judge avatar appears on screen, asking procedural questions such as "Do you have any objections to the evidence?" This digital judge actually manages unimportant routine parts, lightening the load of real judges; final decisions are still made by human judges.

This application has proven to work in China, and efficiency in China's smart courts has reached incredible levels. For example, at the Beijing Internet Court, the average hearing time for a case is only 37 minutes, and cases are concluded from start to finish in an average of 40 days. Moreover, the Supreme People's Court of China announced in 2024 that it has developed a massive AI platform trained on 320 million legal documents. This system has the ability to instantly find similar precedents for judges, automatically write case summaries, and even create draft decisions. For example, the system can scan millions of precedent decisions and say "in 95% of similar cases, the decision was made this way" and present a draft rationale accordingly. Through mobile court services integrated into popular applications like WeChat, millions of case transactions have already been conducted. In short, China is in a position as the country that has most radically implemented the "digital judiciary" vision.

Although there are many justified criticisms and concerns about the Chinese system, we can say that the Chinese example is a striking showcase of what AI can make possible in the judiciary.

Estonia and Europe

In contrast to the rapid transformation in the East, European countries approach artificial intelligence more cautiously and "human-centered." The small Baltic country of Estonia developed a project in 2019 that excited the world to use a "robot judge" in small-scale collection cases under 7,000 Euros. This AI judge would examine documents and evidence uploaded to the system by parties and produce an automatic draft decision, but this decision would be reviewed by a human judge if the parties so wish. In other words, the algorithm would not be the final decision-maker, but a first-level filter. The project remained in a limited pilot phase and never fully materialized. Following criticisms, the Estonian Ministry of Justice clarified the situation by stating "We are not developing an AI tool that will completely replace judges; the goal is a tool to assist judges." Nevertheless, this step attracted attention because it had the potential to be the world's first decision-making AI judge.

In general, Europe adheres to strict ethical principles in the use of artificial intelligence. A 2018 declaration prepared within the Council of Europe set out 5 basic principles for AI in the judiciary:

(a) Respect for fundamental rights,

(b) Non-discrimination,

(c) Quality and security,

(d) Transparency (there should be no algorithmic black box), and

(e) "User control": meaning the human judge must always be at the helm.

A striking example of this approach came from France. France enacted a law in 2019 that criminalized profiling judges' decision data through statistical analysis. In other words, it was prohibited for any company or person to calculate and publish "that a certain judge made such-and-such decisions at such-and-such a rate in the past"; those who violated this prohibition could face up to 5 years in prison. This crime arose from the concern of preventing judges from being turned into statistical objects. Are there criticisms? Of course: prohibiting the analysis of publicly available decisions is questioned in terms of freedom of expression and transparency. However, this example shows that in Europe, the priority in the "AI and law" equation is ethical and privacy concerns rather than efficiency.

USA

In the USA, artificial intelligence appears in court processes more as decision support. Particularly in criminal justice, risk assessment algorithms are used by judges when determining detention and sentencing. The most famous of these is software called COMPAS. COMPAS analyzes data from a hundred-plus question test and criminal records for defendants, assigning each defendant a "risk of recidivism" score. In theory, the aim is to balance the judge's human biases and provide an objective criterion. Indeed, today in many states such as Arizona, Colorado, and Wisconsin, the results of such algorithms are presented to judges.

However, in practice, things are not so rosy. In 2016, an investigative journalism group called ProPublica examined thousands of COMPAS system decisions and reached a striking finding: the software may contain racial biases. For example, COMPAS labeled African American defendants as "high risk" nearly twice as often as white defendants, even when they would not actually reoffend. Conversely, some white defendants who actually continued to commit crimes were downplayed with a "low risk" note. These false positive and negative rates indicate that the system unknowingly reproduces existing societal biases (we've discussed the bias problem in our previous articles). Although the company that developed the algorithm denies the accusations, this situation sparked a heated "algorithmic justice" debate in the USA. As a result, many judges began to use these risk scores cautiously, and some judicial circles even began to abandon them entirely. Although there is not yet a clear prohibitive precedent at the Supreme Court level, a lower court decision warned that "These scores can be used, but judges must keep in mind that these tools can be fallible and biased, and should not base their decision solely on the algorithm."

The US example points to one of the biggest risks in using AI in the judiciary: "Biased data = biased AI." The system is trained on decisions that human judges have made for years. If there has been systematic discrimination or erroneous practices in the past, AI assumes these are objective reality and carries them into the future. In short, data-driven injustices can take on an algorithmic guise. Therefore, lawyers in the USA emphasize "transparency" and "auditability," arguing that these tools should not be a black box. Nevertheless, when used correctly, these systems can help judges, but what matters is that the human judge uses these outputs with a critical mind, not blindly.

Brazil

Another country where artificial intelligence arose out of necessity is Brazil. Brazil had a truly "clogged" judicial system with a population of nearly 100 million and a chronic caseload. The country's supreme court, STF, receives tens of thousands of appeals per year, and judges could not keep up with these cases. As a solution, Brazil deployed an AI assistant called "VICTOR." VICTOR's task is to quickly scan and prioritize appeal petitions coming to the Supreme Court and categorize them. Especially in Brazil, cases of constitutional importance (called the general impact criterion) can only go to the Supreme Court; others end in lower courts. VICTOR reads each application and answers the question "Does this file contain an important constitutional issue?" much faster than a human judge.

To speak in numbers: In the past, a court clerk in Brazil used to spend an average of 44 minutes examining an appeal file and categorizing it accordingly. VICTOR can do the same job in 5 seconds. Moreover, in its first version, it was measured to correctly classify documents with 84% accuracy. Thanks to this tremendous speed, Supreme Court judges have been able to focus on examining only truly important files instead of manually pre-screening thousands of files. VICTOR also does work such as extracting text from scanned PDFs (OCR) and automatically extracting certain sections (summary of the decision, appeal petition, etc.). However, VICTOR is not a decision-maker, but rather a "secretary." In other words, VICTOR's screening does not mean the case is rejected; the final decision is always approved by a human judge. In this way, the system significantly shortens the timelines, even if it doesn't eliminate human error. Indeed, lawyers in Brazil have welcomed this tool, as in a judicial system drowning under a massive workload, the use of technology has become not a luxury but a matter of survival.

Will AI Replace Judges?

After seeing all these examples, one question comes to mind: "Will there be robot judges in the future, or will human judges always continue to exist?" Particularly in popular culture, a dystopian image of a robot in a robe pronouncing someone "guilty" may be etched in our minds and frighten us. In reality, the picture is a bit more balanced.

AI does have strengths:

Memory and Speed: While it's impossible for a human judge to memorize tens of thousands of precedent decisions, an AI program can instantly scan the entire Court of Cassation archive and extract relevant decisions. Just like the Chinese system proposing a draft decision in seconds or the Brazilian AI screening files in 5 seconds.

Consistency: AI operates by adhering to certain rules and data. It doesn't make mistakes in deterministic operations like "if these conditions exist according to rule A, the result is this." It has no emotional fluctuations; whereas research has shown that human judges can experience inconsistencies in their decisions due to factors like hunger and fatigue (for example, it has even been detected that some give harsher decisions before lunch and soften after meals).

Data Analysis: In a complex financial case, an AI can easily analyze thousands of pages of accounting records and detect an irregularity pattern. For a human, this would be days of work.

So what are the human aspects that AI can never (or for a very long time) fill?

First, a humble reflection of our humanity: empathy and conscientious discretion. Adjudication is not a mechanical process; it contains social values and human emotions. Understanding whether a defendant in a criminal case is truly remorseful, sensing the pain of parties in a divorce case, observing a witness's credibility—these are things that require emotional intelligence. Today's AI can analyze text but cannot feel pain.

The second point is equity and flexibility. Laws are general, abstract, objective rules, but within the unlimited diversity of life, sometimes when written rules are applied rigidly, they can produce unjust results. This is why judges are granted discretion. An AI recommends punishment according to average based on the data it was trained on; whereas a judge can make a decision by considering "the circumstances of the concrete case." Justice sometimes requires evaluating the conditions of the situation, and weighing this balance is unique to humans.

Third is social legitimacy and trust. Citizens want to be heard before justice, and being heard is also an aspect of the right to defense. There is a huge psychological difference between a machine giving a cold output and a judge patiently listening to the parties in a hearing and explaining the ruling to their face. People may need to see a human will behind the decision to trust the judiciary. Saying "a robot judge sentenced me" somehow obscures responsibility.

To summarize, AI cannot bring about an "employment apocalypse" that completely eliminates the judicial profession. But it can fundamentally change the way judges work. A judge may perhaps look at ten times as many files in the future, but will have smart assistants while doing so. AI will work like a cognitive prosthesis for the judge—just as someone wearing glasses sees more clearly, a judge using AI will be able to quickly access broader information. Although the final decision always remains with the human, AI will become an indispensable tool on the path to that decision.

Turkey

So where does Turkey stand in light of these global developments? Actually, Turkey is in quite a good position in terms of digital judicial infrastructure compared to many countries. Thanks to UYAP (National Judiciary Informatics System), almost all court operations are already conducted electronically, and millions of decisions and case documents are digitally archived. This large data treasure is a tremendous resource for AI applications.

Indeed, in recent years, concrete steps have begun to be taken in Turkey in the name of AI in the judiciary. The Court of Cassation implemented the AI-Supported Case Law Center project with the support of the Council of Europe. This system, which became operational at the end of 2023, makes the Court of Cassation's precedent decisions available to legal professionals through a smart search engine and recommendation system. According to the statement of former Court of Cassation President Mehmet Akarca, this platform was designed to contribute to the Court of Cassation's mission of ensuring unity of case law and is being applied for the first time in the world within a supreme court in Turkey. In this way, access to justice becomes easier for citizens, the work of lawyers becomes easier (it becomes possible to see precedent decisions before filing a lawsuit and not file a lawsuit in vain or start with the right strategy), and lower court judges are informed of the Court of Cassation's current case law and reduce the risk of giving contradictory decisions.

Of course, Turkey does not yet have applications like "AI judge" or "automatic decision" on the agenda. However, in the Judicial Reform Strategy Action Plan for 2025-2029 published by the Ministry of Justice, expanding the use of artificial intelligence is stated as a goal.

Of course, as in every area of law, it is essential to proceed cautiously in technology integration. Awareness in the legal community should be raised about the risks that AI can bring—generating false information (hallucination), bias problem, lack of transparency. Young legal professionals need to be both technology literate and develop ethical awareness. After all, using technology correctly is also a skill, and learning this will take time.

Conclusion: Human + Machine = The Future of Justice

World examples and Turkey's position show us that artificial intelligence is becoming a permanent part of the judicial ecosystem. However, this does not mean that judges will be completely sidelined. On the contrary, the combination of the human judge's common sense and the machine's computational power is emerging as the ideal model of the future.

It must also be acknowledged that the use of AI will soon become a necessity. Just as a legal professional who doesn't use UYAP today cannot do business, in the near future, a judge or lawyer who doesn't use AI-assisted tools will not be able to compete either. Cases that finish in 40 days in China taking 4 years here will become inexplicable by rejecting technology. Therefore, AI will become an indispensable assistant to the judiciary when properly regulated.

In short, global examples and the steps Turkey has taken show that AI is no longer an innovation hovering around the judiciary, but a fundamental component transforming the functioning of justice. This transformation does not promise a mechanical future that eliminates the human element; on the contrary, it presents a new judicial architecture where the judge's conscientious discretion and AI's information processing capacity complement each other. Undoubtedly, the strong and fast-functioning justice system of the future will be based on the harmonious cooperation of these two components. Therefore, the real issue is to intelligently integrate technology into the service of the judiciary, thereby strengthening both the sense of justice and efficiency; to the extent that we can achieve this, the "age of digital judges" will not be a threat, but an important opportunity for a more accessible and more consistent justice system.