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Research on the application of artificial intelligence technology in the

field of Justice
To cite this article: Chen Mingtsung and Li Shuling 2020 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1570 012047

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ICAACE 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1570 (2020) 012047 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1570/1/012047

Research on the application of artificial intelligence

technology in the field of Justice

Chen Mingtsung 1*, Li Shuling2

1
Department of Public Administration, Nanfang College of Sun Yat-sen University,
Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510000, China
2
Department of Public Administration, Nanfang College of Sun Yat-sen University,
Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510000, China
*
Corresponding author’s e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: With the progress of science and technology, the influence of artificial
intelligence has gone deep into the judicial field. At present, the use of artificial intelligence
in the court mainly includes information data-based, multi-body litigation service system,
online dispute resolution platform, prediction and supervision of the results of entity
judgment and other forms. At present, the application of artificial intelligence in the judicial
field mainly includes the lack of authenticity and integrity of data, the limitation of its
characteristics by artificial intelligence, and the weak acceptance of judges. China's courts at
all levels are promoting the construction of "intelligent courts", which is an important part of
the national network power strategy, as well as the embodiment of E-government in the
judicial field. Through artificial intelligence technology, judicial procedures such as service,
signature, evidence, trial, debate, record and judgment in the process of litigation are
managed and controlled in a unified way. However, there are many problems to be
overcome in the application of artificial intelligence technology in the judicial field.
Therefore, it is the foundation of long-term and steady development to find out the problems
in time and propose solutions.

1. Preface
In the recent years, the number of litigation cases in China has growing rapidly. However, the number of
case handlers, especially judges, has not increased in the same proportion, and the tension of more cases
and fewer cases has been continuing. At this time, artificial intelligence technology have made rapid
development, how to improve efficiency in the case of fewer people and more cases, the focus is also on
judicial intelligence. At present, artificial intelligence technology has been widely used in the judicial
field of our country. The development of judicial intelligence in the judicial field is far ahead of the
theoretical research field. Therefore, it is important and necessary to clarify the relevant concepts from
the judicial practice, clarify the connotation and development background of judicial intelligence, and
then analyse the problems in the process of judicial intelligence.
On July 8, 2017, the State Council issued the new generation of the artificial intelligence development
plan, which pointed out that the establishment of an intelligent court data platform integrates trial,
personnel, data applications, judicial opening and dynamic monitoring, and promotes the application of
artificial intelligence in evidence collection, case analysis, reading and analysis of legal documents, to
realise the intelligent and experimental ability of the trial system. According to the five-year development
plan for the informatisation construction of the people's Court (2016-2020) issued by the Supreme

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ICAACE 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1570 (2020) 012047 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1570/1/012047

People's Court, the informatisation construction of the people's court is an important issue in the judicial
reform and the transformation and upgrading of the court system. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen
the application of information platform and promote the integrated system of science and technology,
such as electronic record items, trial speech recognition, intelligent trial service and office processing
platform, to improve the level of information construction and promote fairness and justice.
Taking the number of judgment documents of "China judgment document network" as the analysis
sample, in recent ten years, China's litigation cases have shown a growth trend, and now it has become the
largest network of judgment documents in the world. By 2019, the number of online refereeing
documents has reached more than 61 million, and the number of historical visits has reached 20 billion,
involving more than 210 countries and regions, with the scale and number rising continuously. The figure
below shows the number of all judicial documents in the ten years from 2010 to 2019. The data comes
from the official website of "China judicial document website". The types of judicial documents include
civil cases, criminal cases, administrative cases, state compensation cases and enforcement cases.
Table 1.2010-2019 Chinese judicial documents (unit: piece)

(Source: China judicial document network)

It can be seen from the chart that the number of cases has an overall upward trend from 2010 to 2019,
among which the number of judgment documents increased nearly five times from 2013 to 2014, and the
number of online judgment documents in 2016 exceeded 10 million, nearly double the number in 2015.
By the end of 2019, the total number of online referee documents reached 19027856, nearly 20 million.
It can be seen that the number of judicial cases in China is increasing year by year, with a large number
of cases and a huge increase. However, the number of judges has not increased in the same proportion,
which has resulted in a tense situation of more cases and fewer cases. At the same time, with the
implementation of the system of investigating misjudged cases in the reform of the judicial system, the
number of cases handled by the judges at the grass-roots level is seriously overloaded, and the pressure
of closing cases is unprecedented heavy.
In the case of fewer people and more cases, how to improve judicial efficiency naturally depends on the
technology provided by artificial intelligence. However, we should be careful in the application of the
"case push" technology of judicial intelligence, which can not produce excessive dependence and ignore
the cumulative harm that "anchoring effect" may produce, thus affecting judicial justice.

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ICAACE 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1570 (2020) 012047 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1570/1/012047

2. Development
At present, the development of artificial intelligence in the court mainly includes information
digitisation, integrated litigation service system, online dispute resolution platform, entity judgment
result prediction, etc.

2.1Information digitalization
Information digitisation refers to the transformation of non-electronic information such as voice and
paper files into electronic data that is easy to save and copy. In 2017, the construction of intelligent
courts covered 31 provinces and 1500 courts. The intelligent voice trial has achieved practical
application results. The average length of court trial is shortened by 30%, the efficiency of collegial
discussion is increased by 25%, and the quality and efficiency of handling cases by judges are
improved.

2.2 Integrated litigation service system

The integrated litigation service system includes litigation service hall, online litigation service
platform, self-service terminal, mobile phone application, 12368 Litigation Service Hotline and other
contents, realising filing, inquiry and consultation on various platforms such as telephone, SMS,
network, WeChat, MicroBlog and APP. There are also intelligent robots that provide human-computer
voice interaction functions to realise intelligent litigation services, including visitor registration system,
self-service filing information filling system, self-service litigation service terminal machine,
self-service equipment, self-service navigation map and self-service electronic litigation guide screen,
to improve the litigants' litigation service experience.

2.3Online Dispute Resolution platform

The online dispute resolution platform can gather the court's trial mediation resources and the whole
society's dispute resolution resources, open up various channels on the line and offline, and flexibly
carry out mediation. At the same time, it can also achieve online mediation agreement and online
judicial confirmation, and improve the efficiency of mediation. For example, Zhejiang Online Dispute
Resolution mechanism platform is the first network integration platform for dispute resolution in
China, with five functions of legal consultation, evaluation, online mediation, online arbitration and
online litigation. As long as landing on the Zhejiang Online Dispute Resolution mechanism platform,
the parties can complete dispute mediation online without leaving home.

2.4 Prediction of judgment results

The application of artificial intelligence technology in judicial documents, the resolution and research
of key points, and the storage of these data in classification, and the establishment of a database, in the
case of comparative analysis, to achieve prediction and judgment. The intelligent push system of
similar cases that the Supreme People's court runs online aims to assist in decision-making,
standardize judgment rules, integrate the application of law with quick query and intelligent push of
similar cases, and repeatedly demonstrate and comprehensively judge the judgment results, which is
the function of artificial intelligence technology in the prediction of judgment results.

3. Scope

3.1 Judicial trial business

The trial work of judges is the core of the proceedings, including the trial and the judgment.
The application of artificial intelligence technology in the trial work of judges is mainly
reflected in intelligent speech recognition and the judgment result prediction in the trial
process. On the one hand, supervise the judge's judgment, reduce the phenomenon of different
judgments in the same case to the greatest extent, to promote judicial justice. On the other
hand, it is of great value to the parties. Through a large number of laws and cases stored in the

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ICAACE 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1570 (2020) 012047 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1570/1/012047

intelligent system, we can choose the best litigation strategy for the parties, reduce the
litigation cost of the parties, and improve the legal awareness and the willingness to protect
rights of the parties.

3.2Judicial Auxiliary Affairs

Artificial intelligence technology judicial assistance mainly embodies two aspects: on the one hand, to
identify and verify the standardization of evidence, to check the evidence materials that are in the key
position in the trial work from the beginning of evidence collection, in order to assist the case handlers
to sort and summarise the numerous evidence materials, to identify invalid evidence, no evidence and
the other situations. On the other hands, in the work of proofreading and correcting the formal errors
of the judgment documents, the errors in the text and expression of the judgment documents affect the
seriousness of the justice, and the intelligent correction of the documents reduces the artificial errors,
which helps to improve the judicial efficiency.

3.3Judicial Search Service

Judicial search is a necessary work skill for all judicial workers. How to search out the target legal rules
or cases quickly and accurately in the vast legal database is always what the judicial workers are searching
for. Now, the traditional retrieval mode is to input keywords, which will present many search results with
keywords. In the future, the research and development of semantic retrieval based on natural language
processing and deep learning technology has emerged, which is the upgrading of traditional retrieval
methods. The intelligent judicial retrieval service can present users with the most relevant and valuable
retrieval results, and reduce the identification cost of irrelevant information.

4. Questions

4.1 Limitations of artificial intelligence

The core of AI lies in the algorithm it uses, and the process of trial lies in reasoning. On the one hand,
artificial intelligence technology itself is difficult to achieve the replication of the trial process. In the
trial practice, the judge mainly relies on the trial experience to make a fair and reasonable judgment on
the facts, evidence and law application. On the other hand, artificial intelligence can not replace the
discretion of judges, which is a supplement of law in the face of the complex social environment,
because the legal provisions to be applied to specific cases can only be achieved through judges.
Artificial intelligence can only rely on data to make judgments, but social life is complex, new
problems emerge in endlessly, it is difficult to make accurate judgments. Just as there are no two
identical people in the world, the parties in each case have a unique personality, and the limitation of
artificial intelligence can only realise the general and mechanised justice. To embody justice in each
case, we can only rely on the discretion of the judge.

4.2 Lack of integrity of judicial data

The core of AI technology lies in the data that it relies on. If the data itself is incomplete, it will
eventually produce incorrect results. At present, China's judicial data come from the online judicial
documents of China's judicial documents which were officially launched in 2014, and the
comprehensive online judicial documents are not complete. Moreover, the judgment document only
records the result of the judgment, and the judge's reasoning process cannot be found in the judgment
document. Therefore, the data source of artificial intelligence technology can not reflect the complete
referee process；it can not achieve accurate referee prediction function.

4.3 Willingness of the judge to accept

The willingness of judges to accept also affects the application of AI technology in judicial
proceedings. At present, the judges who use AI technology mainly focus on young judges. The older
judges are not willing to accept AI technology, and they think that AI technology is not helpful for

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ICAACE 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1570 (2020) 012047 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1570/1/012047

judges to handle cases. Some judges believe that it is emotionally unacceptable to hand over litigation
cases that need social experience to cold robots. They would rather spend much time on their own to
make their judgments, rather than hand them over to AI technology to automatically generate
judgments.

5. Future direction

5.1 Clarify the role of AI technology in judicial assistance

The role of AI technology in the judicial field should be positioned in the auxiliary tools of judicial
workers, which is determined by the limitations of AI technology itself. Although artificial
intelligence has the speed of operation and function realisation that human beings cannot match, and
cannot copy the influence of emotional and social factors in the process of judgment generation, it
cannot replace the judge's trial experience and subjective initiative. If we rely on artificial intelligence
technology to solve cases, we can only achieve general, mechanical and cold justice. However, for a
long time, human thinking and culture of rule of law will have serious retrogression. Therefore,
artificial intelligence technology is applied to deal with technical and auxiliary work, such as court
records, data transmission, etc., to help judges deal with mechanical and repetitive work and improve
the efficiency of judicial work.

5.2 Strengthen the interaction between judges and artificial intelligence

At present, the utilisation rate of artificial intelligence technology in the judicial field is low, mainly
due to the judge 's wrong understanding of artificial intelligence, strengthening the interaction between
the judge and artificial intelligence technology, and changing the original judge working mode. The
court shall improve its understanding of artificial intelligence technology, promote the application of
artificial intelligence technology, and gradually and comprehensively implement online filing, online
marking, online office and online management by organising judges' training, establishing evaluation
mechanism, printing and distributing user manuals, etc. Also, the intelligent robot will be able to serve
as the assistant of the judge and provide more convenience, support and assistance to the judge in
dealing with the duplicate judicial affairs.

5.3 Establish a complete legal database

The incomplete and untrue legal data will affect the accuracy of the application of artificial
intelligence technology in the judicial field. Therefore, the construction of a complete legal database
will be an important work to promote judicial innovation in the future. The spirit of the legal database
is to integrate all kinds of legal data of courts, procuratorates and lawyers, and to make them fully
open. Also, the legal database can provide a wealth of case resources, so that judicial workers can
analyse and summarise various types of cases, which is conducive to improving the level of trial work,
and the public can also predict the judgment results.

6. Comment
In recent years, many new words such as "intelligent court ", "robot judge" and "people's court
informatisation 3.0" frequently appear in the judicial field. The main reasons for these new words are as
follows: on the one hand, there are many problems in the judicial field, such as more cases, less litigation
efficiency, judicial corruption and so on. It can be seen that the judicial interior also needs reform and
improvement. On the other hand, the Internet, big data, cloud technology and other aspects have also
made remarkable achievements. Due to the combination of technology and law, the application of
artificial intelligence technology in the judicial field is inevitable.
Judicial development will be more and more prosperous with the progress of science and technology.
It is unknown what effect and problem will be produced by the new judicial phenomenon. However, we
are sure that the instrumental value of science and technology is obvious, and the application of science
and technology in the judicial field should be encouraged. With the continuous development of science

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ICAACE 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1570 (2020) 012047 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1570/1/012047

and technology, human beings will continue to make progress, and the worry about the hidden dangers of
technology has never been absent from the discussion of technical problems. However, every
technological revolution in history has brought great changes to our lives. We cannot measure the total
value brought by the replacement and replacement of this change process. In the research and
development of science and technology, human intelligence will continue to progress. Resources restrict
science and technology, and science and technology restrict science and technology will be an effective
direction to control science and technology.
The application of artificial intelligence technology in the judicial field will be a real revolution. It will
enhance the transparency of the judicial process, enhance the fairness of the judicial judgment, and
improve the efficiency of the judicial work. It also puts forward many challenges and demands, among
which interdisciplinary research and the cultivation of composite talents are the most fundamental and the
longest cycle. In the face of many theoretical and practical challenges in the process of judicial
intelligence, we should face and solve them. Let technology integrate into our system or ethical
framework, or our system or ethical framework is improved because of the system. We should pay
attention to the construction and maintenance of this internal unity. Therefore, the judge should also be
alert to the application of judicial intelligence case pushing technology, which can not produce excessive
dependence and may cause cumulative harm, thus affecting judicial justice. In the development of
judicial intelligence, there are many challenges and demands in practice, and interdisciplinary research
and the cultivation of composite talents are the most fundamental and the longest cycle. In addition,
judicial practitioners and legal researchers find out problems accurately and timely, design solutions, and
have sensitive prediction ability and problem awareness, which is the foundation of the long-term and
stable development of judicial intelligence.

7.Conclusion
When law meets technology, how will judicial reform respond to the development of artificial
intelligence. At the beginning of the development of new things, there will always be two camps of
conservatives and radicalists, but judicial practice is the field of the combination of legal cognitive
rationality and practical rationality, which is related to legal effectiveness and fairness and justice, which
can be said to be the basic problem of society. With the development of science and technology, even if
the accuracy and flexibility of artificial intelligence technology in predicting the judgment result of a case
reach 99%, we should also avoid the injustice that the remaining 1% may bring. Because of the special
cultural background of our country, whether the artificial intelligence that the dispute settlement
completely resort to the cold ice can be convinced by the public, especially the legal culture of our country
is deeply restricted by the Confucian culture, the legal consciousness of "harmony is precious", "emotion,
theory, law" and so on, replacing human intelligence with human intelligence is not necessarily a good
thing. Therefore, we should be alert to the absolute dependence of judicial workers on artificial
intelligence technology. What we need to prevent or control is the mistakes of human cognition and
cognitive bias, and integrate artificial intelligence technology with our existing institutional framework
and ethical framework, which is the direction we should think about and study.

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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1570 (2020) 012047 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1570/1/012047

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