The rule of law or the rule of robots? Nationally representative survey evidence from Kenya

Abstract

With AI now passing the bar, and with increasing court caseloads worldwide hampering access to justice, there are calls for judges to make use of chatbots to help expedite their work. Such calls pose a normative question: whether our ideal of the rule of law is consistent with judicial reliance on computer generated legal research. In deciding whether artificial intelligence could support the administration of justice in this way, the views of those who stand to gain the most through more readily available dispute resolution will be critical. Collecting nationally representative survey data from Kenya, we report a vignette-based experiment on the acceptability of AI law clerks–assistants whose legal analysis does not decide what the law says but which informs the ultimate decision. We find that an AI’s influence on the law’s application is seen as no less legitimate than that of a human assistant. This result spurs efforts to systematically investigate whether the integration of AI might make justice systems more efficient, accessible, and trustworthy in practice.