Institutional design meets technological change.
Institutions are entering a period of structural transition as advances in artificial intelligence reshape how public power is exercised and governed.
A Report from 2036.
It is 2036 and justice is no longer experienced as a sequence of in-person attendances at court events. The physical elements of the justice system - registries, paper files, court rooms, sheriffs, and court clerks have largely disappeared, giving way to a digital eco-system that is accessible and user-friendly. Process, time and cost is proportionate to the value and complexity of the dispute being resolved. A glimpse into the future of justice reveals the architectural choices that underpinned transformative change and the benefits that flow from interoperability, digitally structured pathways, and carefully governed artificial intelligence.
What emerges is not a story of technological revolution, but of policy pragmatism in the face of inevitability.
Adaptation at pace.
Born-Digital Courts and Process Proportionality in Modern Justice.
Digitally native courts are beginning to operate alongside legacy institutions, enabling proportionate dispute pathways, strengthening administrative coherence, and supporting more accessible participation. Data emerging from born-digital courts established internationally reveals this approach to have substantial advantages in the design and build phases, and in the implementation and pilot phases. These include lower risk profile, especially in data migration and organisational change / resistance; expedited timelines to MVP and launch; better user-comes through process simplification; faster resolution times and lower delivery costs.
Justice sector modernisation is no longer a technology challenge. It is now a question of political ambition, and institutional design.
As the gap between public expectations and justice sector performance widens, the administration of justice will increasingly bear on both economic confidence and public trust in the decades ahead.
Institutional Design and the capacity of Modern States.
Artificial intelligence will not scale on capability alone. Its success depends on trust in the organisations that build it, the outputs it produces, and the systems within which it operates.
The Architecture of Trust explores why legitimacy, governance, and institutional design are becoming the hidden infrastructure of the AI era.
The Architecture of Trust (And other emerging AI design deficiencies).
Institutional design shapes how authority is exercised long before policy is debated. When architecture aligns legitimacy, accessibility, and accountability, public systems become easier to navigate and more resilient under strain. This essay examines how capable states approach institutional renewal — not through disruption, but through deliberate design that preserves trust while enabling adaptation.
Legitimacy & Trust.
Beyond Disposal Rates: Why Distributional Analytics Will Define the Legitimacy of Digital Courts.
Historically, litigants experienced procedural fairness through visible judicial process. In digital environments, fairness is inferred from system design, from whether pathways are understandable, contestable and perceived to be impartial.
This creates a measurement problem.
Traditional KPIs can tell us how quickly matters conclude once they enter the system. They reveal far less about what happens before formal adjudication, including who never proceeds, who abandons claims, or who settles prematurely within highly structured digital flows..
Four Futures for AI and Digital Courts to 2040.
Courts are adopting AI not as a single reform program, but through a growing set of tools: guided filing, triage, translation, transcription, scheduling optimisation, decision support, and drafting assistance. Many of these tools will be invisible to court users. Collectively, they reshape how public authority is exercised: what is seen, what is prioritised, what is delayed, and what becomes decisive. This piece offers a practical taxonomy of court AI, a simple test for measuring how much authority a tool exercises in practice, and concrete governance requirements that preserve legitimacy: disclosure, contestability, auditability, and human responsibility built into workflow and procurement. The aim is not to slow adoption, but to ensure that modernisation increases capability without outsourcing accountability.
Artificial Intelligence arrives in the Courts.
With the aid of multiple scenario tools, strategic choices become clearer.
Most strategies contain a single ‘ghost scenario’ which typically assumes the future looks pretty similar to the present day. In times of uncertainty and rapid change, organisations need to consider multiple scenarios, and devise strategies that remain legitimate in many futures.
This open source tool has been developed to aid scenario planning in civil justice.