The justice system is one of the most essential components of any civilized society, and it has its foundation in liberty, equality, and fraternity. Delivering justice efficiently and effectively is one of society’s most critical processes of ensuring human rights and dignity of life. In the case of providing justice, efficiency is also one of the most essential elements, as “justice delayed means justice denied”. An inefficient justice system demoralises the stakeholders, specifically vulnerable sections of society and drives them not to seek justice and accept exploitation from wrongdoers.
In Indian judicial systems, citizens have witnessed examples of generation-to-generation involvement in judicial cases and not getting a resolution. According to the National Judicial Data Grid, more than 50 million cases are pending nationwide, including approximately 87.4% pending in subordinate courts. As per the government’s reply in Lok Sabha, approximately 80,000 cases are pending in the Supreme Court. Nearly 1,82,000 judicial cases have been pending for over 30 years without any outcome, and 77 per cent of prisoners in India are awaiting trial as well. It is one in three when compared worldwide, as per the New York Times report. At the current level of judicial efficiency, it may take more than 300 years to clear these cases. The question arises: does the Indian justice system ensure justice? This stark reality is a clear case of delayed justice leading to justice denied.
The Indian judicial system is a hallmark of the pendency of cases. But who is responsible for the situation leading to injustice? What are the issues associated with it? Is there anything that can be done in the 21st century? Can technology and the knowledge economy transform such a pathetic scenario positively? These are a few pertinent questions that must be asked and addressed.
Some of the most critical reasons that have led to this pathetic state of the Indian justice system include the non-availability of an adequate number of judges and judicial officers, lack of supporting court staff, and poor state of physical and digital infrastructure. India demonstrates one of the world’s lowest ratios of judges to population, with just 21 per million people, compared with about 150 in the United States, as reported in the New York Times. For decades, India’s leaders and courts have set a target of reducing this ratio. Still, there have been no sizable funding increases in hiring more judges, improving court facilities, and digitising procedures.
Digital transformation applications, products, and services utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology can deal with the backlog of cases and have the potential to swiftly administer justice. AI is revolutionizing our daily lives by intelligently automating governance, socioeconomic systems, and personal decision-making processes worldwide. For example, The finest human players in the world recently lost to AI-driven software in the challenging Go game, which is thought to be more difficult than Chess. Additionally, AI is enabling and transforming cities into smart cities and turning transportation into intelligent transportation. In our daily lives, we have started seeing a wide variety of practical and efficient applications of AI, like self-driving cars, intelligent health diagnosis, face recognition, recommendation systems, chatbots, etc. In the health domain, Stanford AI Software has recently surpassed human-level accuracy in interpreting and analyzing radiologists’ work. Similar trends are being witnessed across the domains and sectors.
But first, Let’s understand AI. AI is a domain responsible for developing machines with human-level intelligence and automating decision-making intelligently. Significant work has been done in recent decades with usable products and services coming into society and making users’ lives easy and comfortable. AI and associated technologies have the potential to transform Indian Judicial systems as well.
The justice system involves two important aspects: The case itself and the judicial process to resolve the case and deliver justice in that particular case. In each case, AI can efficiently perform several tasks and significantly reduce justice delivery time. There are several types of cases, some simple cases involving objective rule of law and provisions and some complex cases where subjectivity and interpretation are involved. For example, cases related to financial fraud, labour disputes, e-commerce issues, domain name disputes, or online copyright issues, etc can be put into objective cases and involve a direct rule-based approach that AI can do very efficiently. For instance, Hangzhou, China, introduced AI-aided courts in 2017 and handled more than 10,000 disputes in half of the time of traditional hearings. Moreover, intelligent robots have been deployed to help retrieve case-related information and histories and relevant past verdicts, leading to a reduction in the workload of the judges.
Any economy aspiring to be the world’s leading economy and 5 trillion targets must focus on the efficiency of the justice system and use AI for the same. AI, cloud computing and big data analytics have enormous potential to get deep insights and patterns from the vast data available in the judicial systems, which are not only suitable for swift cases readdrasal but also for improvement in justice systems overall.
Artificial intelligence (AI) combined with advances in computer vision and natural language processing can aid in the improvement of the judicial process administration by assisting with intelligent document assembly, case retrieval, case categorization, support for discretionary decision-making, and the development of new analytical tools for comprehending and modelling the judicial process and cases. AI decision support tools are anticipated to encourage consistency and efficiency in judicial practice and facilitate the exercise of acceptable judicial discretion. Other judicial tasks, like authoring judicial documents, would benefit significantly from the flexibility, efficiency, and accuracy that such technology would foster.
India is a huge nation with challenging geographic conditions and several types of diversity. AI-driven Online Dispute Resolution Systems (ODRS) with Tele Law facilities have the enormous potential to bring justice on a wide scale efficiently. The ODRS can potentially revolutionize rural and remote areas by eliminating the need for the litigants’ actual attendance in court and the associated expenditures.
The development and growth trajectory of AI and its associated domain can be understood from the investment trends. According to Goldman Sachs Research’s AI growth projections, AI and associated technologies investment could go as high as 2.5 to 4% of GDP in the U.S. and 1.5 to 2.5% in other major AI leaders countries. India has also approved Rs 10,300 Crore for the IndiaAI Mission, which can drive AI-driven innovation in the Indian justice system and its efficient administration.
There are some apprehensions about AI systems and their decisions. There are issues related to lack of transparency in decisions, issues of inclusivity of data, accounting, and explainability of algorithms, and issues related to coded biases. In such cases, AI can be treated as an intelligent assistant to judges and judicial officers, not the final judge making the final judgments and decisions. Without undermining judges’ independence and discretionary judgment, AI will help make the judicial system more efficient, affordable, predictable, and inclusive, ensuring justice is not delayed and denied.
Dr Sachin Kumar is Assistant Professor and internationally acclaimed Artificial Intelligence, Digital Governance, and Urban Computing researcher at Cluster Innovation Centre, University of Delhi. Social Media Handles @profsachinkumar.