TomorrowLawyer: Scholar, Tribune, & Operator

This week Richard Susskind published a short article with the provocative title: The question should be when not if AI will replace judges.

He argues:

“The mainstream view is that judicial decision-making by autonomous systems is neither possible nor desirable. . . That view also suffers from technological myopia, which is a failure to grasp the explosive trajectory of technological advance. Tomorrow’s systems will be hugely more capable, while today’s faults are likely to be overcome in only a few years.”

This is what I call the “Until it Can” argument. A lot of AI Luddites and skeptics overlook the power of this argument. I actually think it is compelling. AI could not write a brief “until it could.” AI could not create realistic movies, “until it could.”

Susskind concludes with this:

“Some AI critics are calling for a right to be heard by human judges. In years to come citizens may demand the reverse — an entitlement to have disputes processed by AI systems. Indeed they may think it bizarre that justice was once regarded as best dispensed by solitary humans, with all their limitations and foibles, rather than by superbly trained AI systems.”

Susskind’s article follows on the heals of the American Arbitration Association deploying its first AI Arbiter.

This is how the AAA describes it:

‘Despite what the term “AI arbitrator” might suggest, no case is decided solely by AI. Here’s how it works:

1. Parties submit their claims and evidence.
2. Parties validate that the AI arbitrator has accurately summarized their submissions.
3. AI arbitrator then parses claims, analyzes evidence, applies law, and drafts a proposed award with record citations.
4. An AAA-trained human arbitrator reviews, revises as needed, finalizes, and issues the award.

This “human-in-the-loop” structure allows for every decision to be grounded in real legal judgment and transparent reasoning—not algorithms alone.

Furthermore, party participation is entirely optional. Both parties must agree to use the AI arbitrator. If one or both prefer a traditional AAA arbitration, that’s exactly what they’ll get.

We’re starting with two-party, documents-only construction disputes—cases where there are no live witnesses and where speed and efficiency are paramount. As the technology matures, we’ll expand to other case types, always with human oversight built in.”

So the capability for AI to replace judges is coming. But this raises a question, should we allow that? Should we want that? From his other writing, I sense that Susskind seems to think this project a good thing, not just inevitable.

Another article however got me thinking about the purposes of courts beyond efficient disposal of dockets. The article was written by Bill Kaufman about baseball umpires and the advent of robot umpires. He wrote:

“I witnessed my first game officiated by the ABS system—automated balls and strikes, or attacking baseball’s soul—two years ago this summer, in a game pitting the storied Rochester Red Wings against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders. An electronic device stationed behind and above home plate determined balls and strikes. The call was transmitted via an iPhone to an earpiece jammed in the meatus of the now-supernumerary home-plate human umpire, who then gave a weak, half-hearted signal. It was like watching a man’s emasculation with 5,000 other voyeurs.

The game being played on the field was recognizably baseball, but there was something off about the experience, rather like when the niece tells Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers that the pod-people version of her Uncle Ira isn’t Uncle Ira. “There’s something missing,” she says. “Always when he talked to me there was a special look in his eye. That look’s gone. The words, the gestures, everything else is the same—but not the feeling.”

I wonder with the “human-in-loop” arbiter described by the AAA article feels the same.

But the line which captured me was this:

“Baseball has, or had, a hold on millions of Americans, and two of the primary reasons are 1) it was a game made sublime by stories of human excellence, struggle, and folly; and 2) it begat community.”

Baseball does begat community, whether little league or major league. There is a collective effervescence at any level. Each level is difference by community building nevetheless.

Courts similarly once occupied such a place of community gathering and participation and observation.

Do modern courts provide this community collective effervescence pre-AI? Absolutely not. I litigated a Stand-Your-Ground hearing this week in a Manslaughter case. The case had generated a good bit of community interest: there were some vigils and marches around the court-square to “force” an arrest. However, barely anyone except the victim’s family, law enforcement, and a local reporter attended.

That hearing wasn’t an outlier either. Most court dockets, both criminal and civil, barely draw the community except for those personal interested or subpoenaed to a case on the docket. However, at least as they wait, they observe the judicial system at work.

But should courts provide a place for community and collective effervescence? I think so.

In ancient time, justice was very public. In the article “Ancient Courts and the Letter of James” in the Fall 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Alicia J. Batten says that “Courts in the Roman Empire were unusually public . . .This means that legal disputes were on full display to the city’s population.” Remember that even in the BIblical narrative, justice was delivered at the city gates. Leaders were regularly found “sitting in the gateway.”

Perhaps AI can allow a return to a pre-modern appreciation for the other aspects of the jury and court. As suggested by Alexis de Toqueville, “[T]he jury is above all a political institution [and] should be made to harmonize with the other laws establishing the sovereignty [of the citizens].”

Another community aspect that we lose if we allow AI to take the role of judges is the opportunity to see Moral Beauty in action. We lose opportunity to see the modern day Atticus Finchs in action.

Just as I believe attorneys must recover the core vocations of Scholar, Tribune, and Operator. I imagine, as part of the Tribune calling, is the aspiration to demonstrate Moral Beauty in advocacy in open court rooms, unusually public.

I believe that the advent and broad roll-out of AI within the justice system allows for a reimaging of, not only law firms, but it may also provide an opportunity for reset within the entire judicial system.

Could we increase the number of juries for all sorts of cases. Could an AI be the “staff” that a jury could use to assist in making its decisions. Could the citizens be the solution to the case bloat?

This moment is not about choosing between human justice and machine justice. It is about deciding what kind of humanity our justice system will cultivate. AI can be used to flatten courts into automated funnels. Or it can be used to re-center the courtroom as a public institution—one that citizens see, understand, participate, attend, and trust.

The technology is moving. The question is not how to stop it. The question is how to use it to rebuild something worth inheriting.

Susskind believes AI will usher in a new era of innovation: using technology to achieve things that were once impossible. I think re-setting the justice system might just be one of those impossible things.