Law as computation in the era of artificial legal intelligence: Speaking law to the power of statistics

Abstract

The idea of artificial legal intelligence stems from a previous wave of artificial intelligence, then called jurimetrics. It was based on an algorithmic understanding of law, celebrating logic as the sole ingredient for proper legal argumentation. However, as Oliver Wendell Holmes has noted, the life of the law is experience rather than merely logic. Machine learning, which determines the current wave of artificial intelligence, is built on data-driven machine experience. The resulting artificial legal intelligence may be far more successful in terms of predicting the content of positive law. In this article, I discuss the assumptions of law and the Rule of Law and confront them with those of computational systems. As a twin article to my Chorley lecture on law as information, this should inform the extent to which artificial legal intelligence provides for responsible innovation in legal decision making.