Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Legal Institutions

       In 1972 Bobby Fisher took over title from  Boris Spassky to become the World Champion and in the same year he played three games against the Greenblatt Program and massacred the computer. In his comments on the games, Bobby said that the computer was very weak and that he could give it great odds and still beat it. In 1989 IBM took up the challenge and build up a computer chip ‘Deep Thought’, which evolved to ‘Deep Blue’, ‘Deep Blue Jr.’, ‘Big Blue’ and finally ‘Deep Thought II’ as it continued to play against grand masters over and over again.

      In 1997 Garry Kasparov was hunched over a chessboard, visibly frustrated. He was fidgeting in between turns and shaking his head in disbelief as he waited for his opponent to put the final touches on an inevitable victory. Finally, Kasparov made his move, stood up and raced away from the board.      He raised his arms, astounded that he was beaten by a machine. His opponent was the IBM supercomputer, a machine that was capable of imagining an average of 200 million positions per second. Going into the match Kasparov was confident, he was the Michael Jordan of chess. He had been beating chess-playing computers and was considered nearly unbeatable.

       When Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all times, lost to a computer in front of a global audience, Artificial Intelligence was out and open and the time had begun when machines were ready to surpass humans in processing data and accurately displaying results, based thereon. The computer continued to use the logic of the grand-masters in arriving at the result and using the final result as new information. By that process the computer reached at a more refined inference and was able to infer at much quicker pace, though it lacked originality or a new idea with which it could experiment, which faculty is unique to human beings.

    The real purpose of AI was and will always be to help homo sapiens to evolve further as better human beings. The direction of human evolution and all institutions evolved by him including law, is to create a harmonized, conflict free civil society without exploitation and corruption and to provide compensation where ever there is misuse of power, will has been suppressed, injury has been caused and damage has been done.

    A chess board has 64 squares, 32 black and 32 white and has 32 players on the board, 16 black and 16 white. Move of every player on the board is defined by rules of the games. The entire game is about placing of each player strategically to checkmate the opponents’ king. With every move the position of the board changes and that leads to making a new move by the opponent. Over the years, 1972 to 1997, the computer continued to absorb the moves of the grand-masters with whom it played and processed the next best move based on the logic of the location of the players on the chess board, by the grand-masters. The next best placement evolved by looking at the moved played by the opponent, the position of the entire board i.e. the placement of all the players on the board on black and white squares and the possible and likely moves that may be made in future. The next move was the result derived from the sum total of all the positions and moves played by all the grand-masters against it all these years.

      In every litigation there are a certain set of facts existing prior to the filing of Suit or FIR. There are about 1250 Central Acts and about the same number in each State and Union Territory, more are enacted and amendments are brought about to the existing enactments regularly. There are Rules, Regulations, Notifications, Memorandums and Government Orders (‘Statutes’) existing and issued almost every day. Supreme Court has in it’s about 50,500 judgments (1950 till date) considered more than 4,000 of such statues and other notifications etc. having force of law. There are about 10 lakh judgments delivered by High Court all over the country and have interpreted a large number of statues and notifications etc. as and when any issue arose before it.

     This is like the setting of a chess board. The parties and their advocates strategically apply statutes and judgments to the facts of their case and by a process of dialectics make all out efforts to get justice in their favour. Unlike chess where the winner is decided by checkmating the opponents’ king, in litigation the Judge decides the winner as he reaches to truth and justice by a process of logic and reasoning based on his perception and experience. In every case the judge has to give grounds for his judgment and hold one party as winner and other as looser on the basis of the information, understanding and appreciation of the facts stated in documents and pleadings, relevant statutes and judgments and his insight into socio economic milieu. He has to compensate the person who has been wronged in civil cases and punish the guilt in criminal cases.

     The documents and pleadings in every case are unique to itself. No two faces are same and no two cases are same, they may be similar or even twins. That makes law different from chess. The society is dynamic and evolving and so are statutes and abrasions. Statues are enacted to deal with abrasions or to regulate the social relationship to restrain abuse, exploitation and corruption. When Kasparov was beaten the computers’ were capable of making 200 million calculation per second and had limited storage capacity. Today they can make up to 10,000 billion calculations per second and have unlimited storage capacity, everything is on the cloud.

   Application of AI to legal institutions is irreversible and unalterable process of evolution and we will have to adopt the same sooner or later. The sooner we accept the change, earlier we will be able to evolve further. It is the most meaningful and phenomenal change for which we have been waiting for a long time, to wipe out every tear from every eye, by bringing justice to all. Once an authentic data on uniform parameters of all the judgments of Supreme Court and High Court, relevant Statutes, pleading and documents therein is created, AI application can provide the following help to all the stake holders, which will continue to become more meaningful and significant as it will be  made more and more applicable:

1.  Benefit to litigants:

a.  It will be possible to read and cull out relevant data from any number of documents and sorting them on the basis of dates and also on relevance. Once the appropriate data is extracted out of the documents, the facts and events can be arranged in strict chronology. On the basis of the information thus extracted, further help can received in drawing out a list of dates and events. In most cases the facts and events are not disputed, in Singapore the advocates have to draw a common list of dates and events. What is in dispute is the understanding, interpretation and the reason behind the event.

b.   After analyzing the dates and events and the existing database of judgments and statutes, the application can display the breaches committed by the parties and the rights of the parties which have been violated.

c.  Once the terms and conditions of contract that have been breached are determined or the provisions of statues that have been violated becomes available, the application can provide the list of judgments that will support the case.

d.    Finally it will also be possible to determine

                i.  the possible time consumed in reaching to the end of litigation

               ii.  the cost of litigation

              iii. whether it will be meaningful to take up the litigation or not

2.  Benefits to Advocates:

a.     Drafting of Deeds, Wills, MoU, Agreements are already in vogue. But it is difficult to lay your hands on formats which are tailor made for the purpose. AI application can help in reaching to a more authenticated format to be used.

b.     Authenticated translation of documents from local languages to English, particularly at the High Court and Supreme Court level still continues to be serious issue. As the database of documents, pleadings, submissions and judgments continue to grow in both vernacular and English Language, more authenticated translations can be made available at a much quicker pace.

c.      Use of AI application will certainly improve the quality of pleadings by eliminating grammatical mistakes and using legal language, spell check is already available. Once a true and correct list of dates and events and pleadings is ready, the next step will be to help in preparing:

                     i.    Issues

                    ii.    Question of law

                   iii.    Grounds in support of the pleadings

d.       Once the pleadings are completed AI application can help in matching them with the oral evidence that come on record.

e.        After the pleading and evidence is completed, the application can help in framing of submissions.

f.        Finally the application can provide for relevant judgments in support and against the submissions.

g.       Based on the entire litigation material the application can also evaluates the pros and cons of the submissions and then assigns a score for each submission

h.      AI can radically make legal research much easier. The humongous redundant results by word search and search within search can be minimized. Advocates always need precise and only the most relevant judgments to be made applicable to the case in hand as precedents. Judgments can be recommended for the specific facts and submissions of the case, which fits their need.

i.        Once the parameters for appointment of senior advocates and judges of High Court are objectively defined, it will be possible for those who wish to make that stream, as their life objective to follow the parameters and reach his/ her avowed ambition for which s/he is willing to work with humility, determination and perseverance.

j.        At the time of elevation of an advocate as judge, it will be possible for her/ him to follow well defined path and be aware of the others in the field, whom s/he will face for appointment as Chief Justice of High Court, judge of Supreme Court of India and Chief Justice of India. A substantial amount of prejudices and preferences will be effectively eliminated.

3.  Benefits to Judges (at all level):

a.   Make the understanding of facts simpler and easier

b.   Provide options in analyzing the facts and decision making process

c.   Provide options for granting punishment to accused and compensation to victim in criminal cases

d.   Provide options for granting of relief, compensation, damages and costs in civil cases

e.    Help in usage of better language and usage of right words and terms

f.   Improve writing of judgments by providing the ground and judgments which supports the final view taken

g.   Identify tonal nuances of the judgement being written and help making them neutral and objective.

h.    Bring about content quality and  consistency

4.  Benefit in appointment of High Court Judges, Chief Justice of High Court, Judges to Supreme Court and Chief Justice of India:

a.    Once the data on the performance of each advocate in each case from the inception of her/his career, becomes available on objective parameters, it will be possible to pick up the best talent from the bar for appointment as judge of High Court. AI will be able to retrieve the following data for each advocate:

                    i.     Petitions and Counters drafted – Subject and issue wise

                   ii.     Admission matters argued – subject and issue wise, including time spent on legs

                  iii.     Final hearing matters argued – subject and issue wise, including time spent on legs

                  iv.     Written Submissions submitted in court or Propositions of law propounded

                   v.     Articles and books published

                  vi.     Presentations and Addresses delivered in national  and international conferences

             vii.    Judges can continue to enter and mark conduct and performance of each advocate in case in which they consider it noteworthy on the parameters like presentation, dignity while addressing, pitch and tone of voice, mannerism, gestures etc.

b.     Once a person is appointed as a Judge of the High Court, report on her/his performance can be objectively retrieved from the proceedings, orders and judgments delivered. Analysis of every Judge can be made by using multivariate regression method of her/his as a single puisne judge, puisne judge along with a senior judge and as presiding puisne judge. Some of the parameters can be:

                     i.    Proceedings issued

                    ii.    Orders delivered - subject and issue wise, including time taken

                   iii.    Judgments delivered - subject and issue wise

                   iv.    Appeals and Special Leave Petitions filed against orders and judgments delivered

                    v.    Orders and judgments confirmed and set aside by Supreme Court

                  vi.  Judgments of Supreme Court, High Court and other courts referred, considered, analysed, explained, applied, distinguished and held obiter etc. in the judgments delivered

                  vii.  Ratio between proceedings, orders, signatory and judgments delivered

c.      Propositions of law propounded in judgments

An algorithms can be developed to use the above data and identify the perceptions of the judge and her/his proficiency in bringing justice to the litigant. It will also be possible to identify inconsistencies in judgments in respect to a particular issue arising in a subject. This data can be used meaningfully for the purposes of her/his elevation as Chief Justice of the High Court and elevation as Judge of the Supreme Court.

5.  Benefit to Legislature and Executive:

a.      There are three basic reasons for a litigation:

                i.    The statute is invalid,

                ii.   The statute is valid but the action is invalid,

              iii.  The person has taken some advantage by violating a provision of statue or breached a term and condition and does not wish to compensate back to the state or the person from whom the benefit have been taken by him.

b.     Normally 50% of litigation is civil and 50 % is criminal and in civil cases 85% are those in which Government is a party. Out of the 3.3 Crore pending  litigation, an AI application can be run on the about 1.40 Crore Civil litigation in which Government is a party, to determine under which of the three heads the case is falling.

c.    If the Legislature understands and realizes that the litigants have approached the court because the statute is invalid in view of law laid down by Supreme Court, they can make amendments to the Statute and that will lead to disposal of all those cases. If the Legislature still persists on continuing with the litigation, the Court must burden the legislature with heavy costs

d.   If the Executive understands and realizes that the litigants have approached the court because the statute is valid, but the action taken by them is invalid, the executive can retrieve the order and get the cases disposed of. If the executive still persists on continuing with the litigation, the Court must burden the Executive with heavy costs.

e.    If the analysis is that the person has taken some advantage by violating a provision of statue or breached a term and condition of the contract and does not wish to compensate back to the state or the person from whom the benefit has been received and is using the process of court to stall such recovery. The court should give him an option to withdraw the litigation and pay back the advantage received by him. If the litigant still persists on continuing with the litigation, the Court must burden with heavy costs.

f.    A mature AI application can over the years help the legislature and executive in ascertaining the validity of a statue or action at the time of its enactment or passing of the order and the possible impact it will make on the exiting judgments and statutes.

         All this can dramatically reduce the mechanical work of the Advocates and Judges and make their contribution to justice more meaningful and purposeful. They can take time in thinking more than what is already made available by the machine. However, AI will never ever replace the ingenuity of an advocate and experience of a Judge and that will be the real test of her/ his value worth as a lawman, to think out of box which is working with her/ him shoulder to shoulder.

        The final vision of application of AI to legal Institutions is that before entering into litigation, the person should be aware of his coming karmas. Before filing the case and during the process advocates are able to put their best foot forward. Before passing an order or delivering a judgment, the same could be thoroughly examined. Finally as soon as a statute is enacted or a judgment is delivered, it must be possible to objectively say “This is Law! This is Justice!” or “Is this a Law? Is this Justice?” This will be the true application of Artificial Intelligence to the legal institutions, not just creating some meta-tags to help retrieval of judgments on subject and issue, which application has now become ancient.

Aruneshwar Gupta

Senior Advocate, Supreme Court

22.06.2020

Role of Information Technology in dispensation of Justice

Truth, Justice and Bliss are the basic and fundamental nature of every human being and the social order. Illegality, injustice and disharmony are choice-less evils that continue to come into existence in the individual and the society. Judges, Advocates and others associated with them, continue to work as kidneys of the system, to detox the society. Conflicts, clashes and litigation have continued, since human civilization came into existence. Contract was created when Shri Ram hugged Sugreev and Vibheeshan and promised them to be made the king of Kishkindha and Sri Lanka respectively. A breach would have led to litigation and during that time resolved by the power of sword, than the power of pen. Justice was done when Shri Ram executed Raavan, for he had brought about a total imbalance in the economic structure, by amassing almost the entire gold existing on earth. Legal relationships, laws, litigation and justice existed even when Information Technology was not existing and was than more effective, efficient and economical.

In this yug, the age of IT started in 1955 when the number of white collar employees surpassed the blue collar, in USA and Europe. When I joined the profession in 1976 in Supreme Court, the settlement of weekly cause list was carried out by the Registrar at 4:30 pm on every Thursday in the Chief Justice Court. I had inherited AIR from 1914 onwards, had purchased SCR, Supreme Court Encyclopedia by Gopala Krishnan provided nominal Table Index, Basu and Mullah were the authenticated Text Books and Manuals were the source of finding the precedents. The only way to remain updated and to refrain from cutting a sorry figure and look around when the judge said “have you looked into the latest judgment delivered by us”, was to go through the cyclostyled judgments circulated by SCBA and regularly maintain personal registers.  As juniors, we had to run from court to court and shake shoulders of our colleague to find out, which matter was going on in the court and go back and tell our senior that he need to rush or need not rush to that court. Sometimes the matter was already over by the time he could reach. The bare acts were barely available.

Today all that looks ancient, we get bookmarked cause list on our mobiles, judgments can be found on tablets and electronic display system helps us to watch other court even when we are on our legs in the court room. Statutes are available within hours of their receiving the assent of the President. But the judges are overburdened by number of briefs and judgments and are at times conscious about the mounting arrears while disposing the cases. The judges have to read much more today, to have a total portrait of the true facts, keep their head high and impart justice without compromising with their conscience, than their predecessors and one basic reason for that, is explosion of information all around in multiple formats.

Three things are basic, fundamental and vital in every litigation and must never be lost sight off.
First, nobody loves advocates. Nobody would enter the office of an advocate unless he is in real trouble, unless his shoe is pinching and the nail is not decipherable and professional legal help is required to resolve the issue and put life in order. There comes the role of the advocates.
Second, every law or litigation comes into existence because there is suppression of a will, exploitation of a being by another and the cry has gone unheard because of some person dominating the existing social forces, by inhuman means. There comes the role of the Judges.
Third, all judges at all times, sitting in the temple of justice, see the cause and also see the persons and issues behind the cause and also the direction in which the society is moving and make all out efforts to do complete justice between the parties. That is how and why truth and justice exist and we still have a hope.

The litmus test of evolution and eminence of every institution today and hereafter will be the extant of use of information technology made by its stake holders.  It is not difficult to fully understand, appreciate and implement the extant of use of IT in dispensation of justice, as there is no rocket science involved in it. The difficulty is in making the stakeholders’ use it in every field of their activities. Use of IT in courts by NIC will not alone be effective unless, advocates and their clerks are well trained and tuned to use it.

Use of IT is a great bounty in the hands of us all, as it can be effectively used for collating, organizing and interlinking information. But a few things are imperative and if we do not pursue them, IT will be there but not as handmade to justice, but as money spinner for IT Consultants, hardware manufacturers and others and a fashion statement by flashing light on our own face and saying ‘Look! We also use IT”. We have to have a correct complete and overall picture of the entire litigating process, with the role of each stake holder well defined and the most important is the economics of each stakeholder. Every stakeholder in the legal industry is not working as an NGO, using tax payers money as grants or charities, but we are all here as professionals who are paid for speaking the truth and we demand respect and reverence, for we hold self - esteem, dignity and pride, in what we do. Finally we have to watch the vested interest of those who survive on chaos, confusion and commotion and those who are supporting them consciously, unconsciously or even remotely, for their interest is to lead the institution to legal rigor mortis and disgrace.

Look around and see if over 300 existing vacancies of judges in High Courts are not filled, because the issue is referred to a constitutional bench or otherwise, if cases are not determined speedily, if justice is not imparted in time, who is empowered. The answer is obvious, all those elements, whose very existence is based on presence of injustice, exploitation and poverty in the society and they are everywhere, from politics to beggars. Social predators continue to wait for assignment of throwing out tenants, recovery of created and illegal debts, holdings bandhs and gherao, shouting slogans, stalling court proceedings, making government fall and making the great nation look mean and small and IT makes such information available, easier and faster.

The installation of electronic display devices in 1986 in Supreme Court giving court number and item number was the first step in making use of IT and today we can get live display boards of all the courts on our mobile is a long leap, but that took more than 25 years. From getting judgments of courts on the tablets in a structured format to the ultimate, introduction of Artificial Intelligence in litigation is a long way to go and will take another 25 years or more, if we start today. Some of the countries are already using Artificial Intelligence for last over a decade in sentencing policy and other areas.

 IT can be implemented for dispensing justice by moving information seamlessly in the following manner with ease, if there is a Will to do it:

• Providing Neutral Citation for all judgments delivered by Supreme Court and 24 High Courts, to eliminate the chaos created by over 600 law reports published all over the country and now web judgments. All giving their own independent citations. Neutral Citation was implemented in Canada, UK, USA and Canada in year 2000, we are just 15 years behind
•  Creating database of judgments on each subject and issues and linking them with the subject index used in the court for classification of cases and making the data available to Advocates. This will bring more uniformity in decision making process and assist Advocates to give meaningful legal opinion to their clients;
• Entering DIN Number, PAN Number, Adhaar Card No. or any other identifiable number of each litigant, witness, deponent in each litigation and have a common linked database on litigating persons and those associated with them. We have over three crore pending cases and if we are able to create the interlinking database, believe you, me friends, we will be able to filter about thirty lakh professional criminals and professional litigants
• Creating a common database of litigation in which Government or any Article 12 Authority is a party and sharing it between Courts, Government Department, PSU, Law Department, Attorney General and Advocate General Office to enable legislature to plug holes where necessary and put an end to several frivolous litigations and putting them on notice in similar issues
• Existing data on decided cases should be moved from High Court Registry to Supreme Court Registry in cases filed in Supreme Court. This will save enormous costs and man hours of the country;
• Creating and using database on advocates on number and nature of filings, appearances, written submissions, articles published, presentations made, conferences attended to have some objective basis for appointment of advocates as judges to High Courts. Family, chamber, caste relationship is an anathema for holding such high station and injustice to other advocates joining the bar;
• Implementation of One Bar one Vote for each Bar Association by using a common data base of advocates already available with Bar Council of India and having electronic voting. This will make the Associations more effective, meaningful and purposeful. Every leader of the bar will have his defined territories to work on and make them more professional;
• There is a need of over two million IT trained clerks or Para Legal Associates to support over one million advocates in the country and maintain their office;
• Creating database on judgments delivered by judges of High Courts and how they fared in Supreme Court, to have some objective basis for appointment of High Court judges to Supreme Court;
• Implementing Court Live to bring about more transparency and fully implement the avowed principle of open door justice;

 In every case the Judge is on a chess board making whole hearted efforts to make justice win. On the other side is injustice continuously digging pits, confusing issues, flashing baits, veiling the truth, creating non-existent fears to make justice lose. Information technology if used to its full proper potential, is one of the greatest tool in the hand of judge, to make quick moves in dispensation of speedy justice. But to make its full use, judges will have to get all the stake holders trained and aware of interconnected, interlinked, inter-weaved and interlaced databases on judgments, statutes, subjects, issues, decisions, litigants, books, articles and a process that filter the entire information and also suggest possible, probable answers and alternatives, to enable the judges impart justice for all.