I would also add — and concede — that a feature like this needs to be considered in the context of a larger justice system to see how all its moving parts are, or are not, designed and intended to function, both practically and philosophically.
For example: in my country, the police do not independently make the decision to put someone under arrest. They can apprehend someone in the commission of a crime, but the decision to formally arrest the individual is an order made by the state prosecutor’s office. If the prosecutor declines the arrest, the individual goes free with nothing on their record. It’s not common, but it does happen, and is another facet of how our system spreads the power around.
Another major difference, more on point to the discussion of judges, is that our legal system follows the Civil Law (or Napoleonic) model. Judges are interpreters of the law solely as written. Caselaw is not at all binding, as it is in the US common-law system. Similar or comparable cases may provide guidance, but they confer no precedent.
Further, judges in our system are not simply neutral arbiters who enforce procedure as the two adversarial attorneys build their respective cases. Rather, our judges operate according to inquisitorial rules — their role in the courtroom is to actively pursue truth. They directly question witnesses and steer the course of inquiry. (Americans who saw the French film Anatomy of a Fall got a taste of this, and were very confused about the mechanics of the trial, as French judicial behavior seemed wrong and alien. But the movie’s presentation is on point for this model.)
Consequently, it makes sense that a legal system which relies so heavily on pure understanding of the law and whose judges are required to be active investigators during a trial would favor a selection method which emphasizes technical and professional qualifications, which only other judicial practitioners are really able to evaluate.
And further, this is not the kind of reform that can be introduced absent the context. It’s part and parcel with an entire judicial operating philosophy, and it all has to be built from the ground up.
The O.J. Simpson trial is a spectacularly bad example of purported jury malfeasance as I noted above:
Marcia Clark requesting that OJ Simpson put on ‘the glove’ (over an already latex gloved hand, and shrunken by having been soaked in blood and then dried) was one of the most spectacular miscalculations by a prosecutor, although it did give Johnny Cochran his moment in the sun because he contributed little else to the actual defense strategy. Despite having a weapon, the gloves, copious evidence of Simpson’s presence at the house in the night in question, a history of domestic violence and threats from the defendant who also tried, if ineffectually, to flee justice, the prosecution managed to blow up their case at every possible turn, aided by the overt history of racism of Mark Fuhrman. The defense wasn’t even all that coherent and featured the egotistical members of the high priced legal “Dream Team” mostly arguing with each other, and Clark still managed to fail to present a case for a guilty verdict.
As forJay Leno walking around and getting wrong answers of people isn’t any kind of an unbiased survey because they are literally editing those clips to get the most sensationally moronic answers. You don’t get a string of people giving correct answers because it would’t be very funny. That isn’t evidence of anything except that watching stupid people is kind of entertaining, at least for the low bar of late night television.
Attorneys like Johnnie Chochrane and, especially, F. Lee Bailey, didn’t get their stellar reputations and astronomical billing rates by accident. Bailey was known by the moniker, “if you have Bailey for an attorney, you must be guilty as sin”, yet constantly managed to get his clients acquitted.
Yes, sure, the Leno stuff was edited to display maximum stupidity, but consider the following. The level of ignorance on display was equal to what I have seen from every single Trump voter that I have ever seen interviewed, and while that may not be a fair cross-section of all voters, it certainly wasn’t a highly selected one. The ultimate and undeniable evidence is who won the 2024 presidential election, and the horrific consequences now unfolding. There we have the equivalent of a “jury of your peers” determining national leadership.
I agree that Marcia Clark was less than competent (I wonder if she was ever asked whether the sun or the moon was larger, or where the sun goes at night). But I strongly disagree that the jury “had no choice” but to reach the verdict they did. I’m pretty sure that an intelligent jury would have weighed the evidence differently, notwithstanding the failures of the prosecution. I mean, you surely have to agree that it’s possible to have a clearly guilty defendant being prosecuted by incompetents?
I agree. None the jurors in my trials have been that level of ignorant or uninformed. In fact, many have advanced degrees and are very attentive and conscientious. Anyone that stupid would be bumped by one side or the other.
In addition to what Stranger has pointed out, the prosection in OJ’s case took 8 months for what should have been a two- or three-week trial. If you can’t put on your case in three or four weeks, you don’t have a case.
Agreed. I always thought the biggest problem with that trial was Judge Lance Ito, who appeared to be simultaneously loving the limelight, cowed by the star power of the defense team and generally not in control of his courtroom. The defense was trying for a circus and Ito allowed one.
You’re attributing a lot of idiocy and/or malfeasance to the jury without having been in the jury room, but if you read through the trial transcripts (yes, I did, on a screenwriting project for a class) and you can see how stunningly unprepared Clark was, how she make gaff after gaff, and again, she and Chris Darden didn’t seem to think through the entire consequences of requesting that Simpson try on the glove in front of the court and jury. In the minds of many people, that demonstration alone provided ‘reasonable doubt’ despite the factors noted above, and even if it had fit it wouldn’t have actually proven anything except that the killer coincidentally wore the same size of glove as Simpson. It was just such a stupid, thoughtless move to try to create a showy moment with no legal significance which completely backfired on the prosecution, which was otherwise wrecking their own case with a lack of trial prep, confusing expert witnesses, and a linchpin detective who turned out to be a racist habitual liar.
That Simpson was actually guilty and we all know it is kind of irrelevant before the law; if the prosecution can’t make the case to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, they have to acquit the defendant.
I felt that the OJ trial was kinda a sign of more racial equity. I suspect that it’s always been true that a fabulously wealthy and popular White man is unlikely to be convicted of murder. And now the same is true for a fabulously wealthy and popular Black man.
Anyway, i don’t think it was representative of a usual trial.
It wasn’t. It was a spectacular miscarriage of justice – which is why it is still talked about. Like I said earlier, when justice works as it is meant to, it’s almost never a story.
For jury selection there is a Batson Challenge which was meant to make sure juries were properly diverse (e.g. no all-white jury judging a black person).
Almost immediately seminars (and things like them) appeared to tell lawyers how to get around a Batson Challenge.
Both sides are always trying to game the system.
ETA: The podcast “More Perfect” has a good episode explaining this and how lawyers are coached to avoid it:
I’ve spoken to Crown prosecutors about this, and one comment summed up the conversations: “I’ve got a complex trial to put on. Why would I select for stupid people on the jury who won’t understand my case?”
Juries can be messy and unpredictable, judges can be biased, and AI can hallucinate (and also bring bias). I propose a combination of a legally-tuned AI model + 3 judges + 12 jurors.
AI does the heavy lifting—reviews all the evidence, applies precedent, and delivers a verdict with a plain-English “here’s why.” The panel of judges reviews that reasoning—making sure it’s legally sound and bias-free. Then the jury of 12 gets the case, but instead of starting from scratch, they begin with the AI’s analysis and the judges’ review. Instead of drowning in bad PowerPoint presentations and time-consuming objections, they start with clarity, not chaos.
Same jury of peers, but faster, more consistent, and much less confusion. 12 Angry Men… but less angry, and armed with AI CliffsNotes. Streamlined justice.
I’m pretty sure that “a legally-tuned AI model” (I assume you mean a multi-modal LLM as that is the only implementation of deep learning model that would be suitable for reviewing testimony and evidence) used to “reviews all the evidence, applies precedent, and delivers a verdict” is not going to improve reliability (certainly not at the current state of the art), and while there are certainly aspects of the US system of jurisprudence that could be ‘streamlined’, the trial and deliberation process should not be one of them. We have enough miscarriages of justice through ‘streamlining’ defendants who can’t afford an expensive defense into a plea bargain or conviction.
Also, and I just point this out because it is often glossed over or not understood, but the Henry Fonda character in 12 Angry Men actually undermined the trial process and illegally influenced the jury by going outside of jury deliberations to do his own research, bringing back a piece of indirect evidence not examined by the court, and proposing a theory that was not addressed by either the prosecution or defense. The film (and play that proceeded it) is often held up as an example of what the jury system should be but in fact it actually subverted the system to protect the integrity of the trial process. In deliberations the jury can pass questions back to the judge to review evidence and transcripts and in exceptional cases even reopen the trial to focus back on some issue that was unclear or not thoroughly examined but they cannot go outside the court and collect their own evidence or otherwise engage in research beyond the scope of what was presented at trial.
I get your concern: “streamlining” can be dangerous (plea bargains prove that). But my idea isn’t about cutting corners, it’s about cutting the noise. AI wouldn’t replace the trial process, it would act more like a GPS so the jury doesn’t spend days wandering lost in the weeds.
The AI organizes the evidence and precedent, the 3 judges audit that reasoning, and the jury still makes the final call. Because the AI trims hours (sometimes weeks) of procedural slog, you can realistically have three judges instead of just one—and three sets of eyes are better than one when it comes to spotting bias or mistakes.
If I’m innocent, I’d hate to be at the mercy of one judge having a bad day. If I’m guilty, I might hope for one judge or one jury leaning my way. Three judges plus a jury balances that out. I was a defendant in federal court years ago, with one judge and no jury. Despite not being guilty, I was very scared. He looked like he as having a bad day.
The result? Faster trials, more consistent verdicts, and juries starting with clarity instead of twelve people zoning out after lunch, debating hamburger orders. Not less justice—just clearer justice with fewer post-lunch zone-outs.
And you’re right about 12 Angry Men: Henry Fonda was basically a “vigilante juror”. My version is the opposite—keep everything inside the courtroom, but give the jury a better toolset so they truly understand what they’re deliberating. No hardware store field trips required.
Until your wife comes very close to going to jail for 179 days for violating a court order that was proven to the Judge that:
Her signature was forged
She never even saw the “order”
It was never signed by a judge but a friend of her ex-husband.
And that she had to hire another attorney who was a friend of the judge. As soon as she did - case dismissed and nothing happened to the ex-husband.
This seems like more opportunities for confusion and error rather than less, especially given that LLMs are not optimized for factuality or ‘truth’.
Again, of the fundamental and procedural problems with jurisprudence in the United States, the jury system is about the least of them. It is inconvenient, not very efficient, and has the potential for bias or misinterpretation but adding more judges and injecting AI doesn’t really address any of those complaints.
I read a few papers back in the days when the AI field was heavily focused on using symbolic nets and similar methods rather than ‘deep learning’ neural networks for producing a true knowledge system (what would have been called an ‘expert system’ a couple of decades ago). One of the proof-of-concept type approaches was to apply this to law because the law is largely codified and language in statutes and regulations is used in very specific ways to constrain semantic interpretations, and even this often produced ambiguous and confusing results in ‘toy models’. This probably means that even statute law isn’t actually as explicit and linear as we would like to believe that it is, and once you add in caselaw (for US jurisprudence) and common law you have a system that is just about as complex as general language.
This approach cuts the lawyers out entirely from the instructions to the jury. That would be a breach of due process. Defence counsel have the right to review the evidence and make submissions to the judge about the instructions to the jury.
Even more basic, is the law inherently unfair? There are a few laws that I would pretty much jury nullify out of the gate. Plus there are some circumstances that the illegal act was justified. Yeah punching that guy was legally battery but you only hit him once and he deserved it but pushing the line.