Democratic legitimacy of AI in judicial decision-making

Concerns have been expressed regarding the impact of automation procedures and penetration of new technologies into the
judicial feld on fundamental rights, democratic values and the notion of legitimacy in general. There are particular risks
posed to the legitimate judicial decision-making and the rights of the parties of court proceedings. This paper examines the
complex relationship between the artifcial intelligence (AI) and the democratic legitimacy of judicial decision-making.
While AI systems have been introduced in various areas of public administration to support law application and public policy,
their role in the judiciary raises distinct questions about the legitimacy of algorithmic infuence on adjudication. Normally,
traditional judicial legitimacy is grounded in principles of impartiality, transparency and reasoned justifcation, which AI
systems challenge by potentially disrupting these core democratic tenets. There lies a possibility that biased algorithms will
be deployed in justice. The judges and their impartial and independent thinking and reasoning will be crowded out and the
judiciary will be gradually replaced by machines reaching a decision based on statistics rather than an individualized assessment. This, not that far-fetched scenario, seems menacing for the whole democratic structure and idea. This paper reviews
theoretical perspectives on democratic legitimacy, focusing on the contrasting views of judicial authority as either an undemocratic imposition on political rights or as a consensual safeguard for fundamental rights within a democratic context. Unlike
previous studies that examine the raised topics in isolation, this paper provides a comprehensive framework that evaluates
the diverse degrees of AI automation and how they afect impartiality, publicity and reasoning. It goes further by exploring
its possible threats to those aspects of democratic legitimacy and suggesting some possible solutions to counterbalance them.
Despite the doubts over the compatibility between AI and democratic ideals, this paper contributes an innovative hybrid
model for judicial decision-making that integrates human oversight with AI assistance, seeking to reconcile the benefts of
AI with the need to uphold democratic principles within the judicial review process. This approach aims to fll a critical gap
in the current literature by directly confronting challenges and opportunities presented by AI in judicial contexts, with a view
to sustaining democratic values in a future where the role of AI in the judiciary is likely to expand.