The state and prospects of implementing digital technologies in judicial practice

The use of digital technologies in judicial practice is a natural result of the digitalization of society. This is due to the increasing role of the court in maintaining the balance between the individual, society and the state, and the fact that improving the quality of judicial decisions by using the potential of digitalization should be considered as a factor influencing the formation of such a balance. The problems of using digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, arising in the course of judicial proceedings both in the Russian Federation and in foreign countries are analyzed. The processes of digitalization affecting judicial proceedings are studied; statistical data of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation confirming the annual increase in judicial workload are given; the validity of priority formation in approaches to the modernization of the judicial system and the development of digital technologies in judicial activity is analyzed. The authors substantiate the conclusion about the possibility of platform transition to the implementation of digital court proceedings, which is most capable of ensuring a cumulative effect and rearising strategic goals in the use of AI in judicial practice. The use of digital technologies makes it possible to reduce the judicial workload when performing routine activities (information and documentary, expert-analytical, linguistic and translation) and organizational support of court proceedings. The use of digital algorithms will allow the judge to instantly obtain the necessary analytical information and avoid violations in the formation of uniform judicial practice. The analytical results of the use of digital technologies in foreign judicial practice (UK, Kazakhstan, China) show that their use in court proceedings contributes to ensuring impartiality, incorruptibility, strict adherence to the provisions of the law, speed of fulfilment of tasks in 24/7 mode, ability to choose the best solution from a large amount of information. The authors analyze the emergence of risks associated with the possibility of ignoring the factual circumstances of a court case, which arise from the decision-making model embedded in the algorithms of artificial intelligence. The consequence of such risks is a deviation from the principles of adversarial, direct and free evaluation of evidence, which will result in the implementation of formal justice. As a conclusion in the study, the authors point out that the use by judges of the results of the implementation of artificial intelligence implies an in-depth study of the tasks related to the participation of generative AI in the judicial process as a subject, developing and asking questions, keeping (drawing up) the minutes of the court session, as well as maintaining the confidentiality of personal data of the participants in the proceedings when working with AI. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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