The Rule of Law or the Rule of Robots? Nationally Representative Survey Evidence from Kenya

36 Pages Posted: 21 Jun 2024 Last revised: 24 Nov 2024

See all articles by Brian Flanagan

Brian Flanagan

National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth) - Faculty of Law

Guilherme Almeida

Insper

Daniel Chen

University of Toulouse Capitole - Toulouse School of Economics

Angela Gitahi

McGill University

Date Written: June 14, 2024

Abstract

With AI now passing the bar, and with increasing court caseloads worldwide hampering access to justice, there are calls for judges to make use of chatbots to help expedite their work.  Such calls pose a normative question: whether our ideal of the rule of law is consistent with judicial reliance on computer generated legal research. In deciding whether artificial intelligence could support the administration of justice in this way, the views of those who stand to gain the most through more readily available dispute resolution will be critical. Collecting nationally representative survey data from Kenya, we report a vignette-based experiment on the acceptability of AI law clerks - assistants whose legal analysis does not decide what the law says but which informs the ultimate decision. We find that an AI’s influence on the law’s application is seen as no less legitimate than that of a human assistant. This result spurs efforts to systematically investigate whether the integration of AI might make justice systems more efficient, accessible, and trustworthy in practice. 

Keywords: AI, Legal Reasoning, Experimental Jurisprudence, LLM, Rule of Law, Robot Judges

Suggested Citation

Flanagan, Brian and Almeida, Guilherme and Chen, Daniel and Gitahi, Angela, The Rule of Law or the Rule of Robots? Nationally Representative Survey Evidence from Kenya (June 14, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4865782 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4865782

Brian Flanagan (Contact Author)

National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth) - Faculty of Law ( email )

Maynooth, County Kildare
Ireland

Guilherme Almeida

Insper ( email )

R Quata 300
Sao Paulo, 04542-030
Brazil

Daniel Chen

University of Toulouse Capitole - Toulouse School of Economics ( email )

Toulouse
France

Angela Gitahi

McGill University ( email )

1001 Sherbrooke St. W
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1G5
Canada

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