Workshop on: "Judicial independence in the age of AI and democratic erosion: risks, pressures, and safeguards"

This workshop examines how judicial independence (JI) and judicial governance (JG) are reshaped under contemporary democratic erosion, digitisation and the use of AI in judicial workflows. The combined effect of these forces on JI and JG, especially discretion, accountability and institutional autonomy, remains insufficiently understood, and the workshop fills this gap in line with the IISL priorities on AI, Digital Justice and Justice Transformation.

The workshop treats JI as a dynamic product of legal, socio-political, and institutional arrangements, using the ELI–Mt Scopus European Standards of Judicial Independence (the Standards) as a benchmark.

Rationale and scope

Multiple factors shape JI: partisanship in JG (appointments, evaluation, discipline), financial constraints, managerial steering, and declining public trust. These dynamics routinely affect the public service of justice. Applying the Standards allows identification of tensions and vulnerabilities across institutional designs and technological arrangements (e.g. e-justice platforms, GenAI). The workshop focuses on the socio-legal mechanisms through which platforms, data infrastructures and institutional reforms influence JI and JG.

Workshop structure

1. Pressures in times of democratic erosion

Case studies will illustrate how reforms, administrative instruments, and internal legitimacy conflicts create recurrent contemporary JG tensions. Variations in institutional design, digitisation and democratic trajectories of the selected jurisdictions feed a comparative analysis anchored in the Standards (e.g. regarding governance and ethics).

2. Digitisation and AI driving JI and JG transformation

Digitisation and AI introduce platformisation, datafied governance, vendor dependence, opacity, redistribution of discretion, new evidentiary processes, accountability gaps and accessibility risks (skills, language, digital divides). Contrasting practices across jurisdictions (Brazil, Australia, European jurisdictions) reveal where these mechanisms challenge safeguards

3. Synthesis and protective measures

The workshop integrates (I) and (II) to show how partisan and political, managerial and digital, reinforce risks of capture (e.g. performance metrics and automation; centralised platforms and control over judicial work; opacity and weakened accountability). It develops protective governance, technical, and professional measures to supplement the Standards and uphold autonomy, impartiality, fairness, equality and accessibility.

Contribution to socio-legal studies

The workshop treats courts as socio-legal and socio-technical assemblages shaped - or destabilised - by political, managerial, and technological forces. It tests the Standards in digital settings and advances socio-legal scholarship on JI and JG by showing how institutional and technological arrangements affect them; by proposing a comparative framework on digitisation and AI anchored in the Standards; and by assessing whether the Standards remain fit for purpose in digital and AI-driven settings.