Case Law in Civil Countries

This project seeks to fill the gap in the legal domain is a key modern challenge, as evidenced by the fact that the European Union’s mooted AI Act explicitly considers such use as “high risk”. Yet, the development of AI for adjudication remains, in fact, under-developed, partly because research on and development of AI methods and tools in this domain remains expensive, data-intensive, and politically sensitive. In addition, language barriers decrease the potential benefits of using AI models trained on a single jurisdiction to other legal contexts.

This project seeks to fill the gap in current AI and legal research by focusing on the development of models fit for AI implementation in civil law jurisdictions. While civil law jurisdictions represent a majority of the world’s legal systems (Graph 1), and share significant characteristics, the majority of AI tools available in civil law jurisdictions are based on methods and models development in common law jurisdictions (including common law datasets) that are retrained and transposed to civil law jurisdictions.

One of them is France. The French Cour de cassation, in partnership with the Ordre des avocats aux Conseils, has decided to take advantage of the potential of artificial intelligence by making court decisions contained in the case law databases administered by the Cour de cassation available free of charge, in order to carry out research into artificial intelligence.

The aim of the project is to study the workflow of cases heard by the Court, using the potential of new technologies. With an initial duration of 18 months, it will accompany the reflections on the role of the Court of Cassation.

The Court will provide researchers with pseudonymised pleadings and rulings in order to identify arguments and legal issues, as well as connections, and to attempt to objectify the notion of the complexity of a case.

Partenaires

Cour de Cassation, Ordre des avocats au conseil d’état et à la cour de cassation, HEC Paris, Polytechnique Paris, Hi!Paris