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A gavel in a court room.
Legal limbo: Canada, US behind on judicial appointments
There are currently 75 vacancies. Justice Minister Arif Virani took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to defend his government’s appointment record, arguing the Liberals have made judicial appointments “at the fastest pace in history” – a feat, he noted, the Conservatives have never managed to achieve.
The US has its own judicial vacancy issues, with 51 positions waiting to be filled for US district courts – with 18 nominees pending. Those vacancies account for all but four empty seats on federal courts throughout the country. The US Court of Appeals is light three, and the Court of Federal Claims is short one.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Joe Biden is rushing to fill seats – and to shape the judiciary to the extent that Donald Trump did. The process has been slowed by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s illness, which hampered the work of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Republican efforts to slow appointments.
Meanwhile, state-level court appointments, or a lack thereof, are slowing down proceedings throughout the country, contributing to a crisis in the justice system.A view of the US Supreme Court, in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Jan. 8, 2024.
Courting AI opportunities (and hallucinations)
The AI boom, he said, brings both opportunities and concerns, noting that legal research may soon be “unimaginable” without the assistance of AI. “AI obviously has great potential to dramatically increase access to key information for lawyers and non-lawyers alike,” he wrote.
But he also cautioned “humility,” noting how “one of AI’s prominent applications made headlines this year for a shortcoming known as ‘hallucination,’ which caused the lawyers using the application to submit briefs with citations to nonexistent cases. (Always a bad idea.)” Indeed, AI chatbots tend to make stuff up — or hallucinate, which has been a repeated problem since the debut of ChatGPT.
So far, US federal courts have taken a decentralized approach, with 14 of 196 publishing their own gruidance on how AI tools can and cannot be used in litigation.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the United Kingdom recently took the first step toward allowing AI as an assistive tool in legal opinion writing. “Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI,” high-ranking judge Geoffrey Vos wrote. “But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce.”
So British courts will begin allowing AI to be used in legal writing, but not research — because of the aforementioned tendency to hallucinate.
Will AI judges take over? Roberts made an eloquent case against this and an impassioned defense of the humanity central to being an effective judge.
“Machines cannot fully replace key actors in court,” he wrote. “Judges, for example, measure the sincerity of a defendant’s allocution at sentencing. Nuance matters: Much can turn on a shaking hand, a quivering voice, a change of inflection, a bead of sweat, a moment’s hesitation, a fleeting break in eye contact. And most people still trust humans more than machines to perceive and draw the right inferences from these clues.”
Who is Attorney General William Barr?
President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over materials special counsel Robert Mueller used to assemble his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Attorney General William Barr, who faces growing backlash from House Democrats after refusing a subpoena that called for the release of those very materials, has long been an advocate of broad executive power. Barr's past may offer some insights into the present situation.