Former Michigan Chief Justice Bridget McCormack argues that the legal system's probabilistic nature, driven by human fallibility, is a core inefficiency. Greater predictability would reduce disputes by allowing businesses and individuals to plan around clear, consistently enforced rules.
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When discussing AI risks like hallucinations, former Chief Justice McCormack argues the proper comparison isn't a perfect system, but the existing human one. Humans get tired, biased, and make mistakes. The question isn't whether AI is flawless, but whether it's an improvement over the error-prone reality.
Litigation is costly because it's an arms race to explore a vast combinatorial space of legal arguments. Sufficiently powerful and cheap AI could search this space so exhaustively that no useful new moves remain, effectively ending the arms race and placing a natural ceiling on legal costs.
Former Chief Justice McCormack argues the legal system is a public good most citizens can't access, comparing it to needing a special guide to use a public highway. With 92% of Americans unable to afford legal help, the system is fundamentally failing the majority it's meant to serve.
The perceived politicization of established legal institutions, such as the Delaware Chancery Court, undermines the principle of "rule of law." This creates a powerful opening for "rule of code," where smart contracts provide a deterministic, impartial alternative that cannot be retroactively altered by a judge.
Unlike a human judge, whose mental process is hidden, an AI dispute resolution system can be designed to provide a full audit trail. It can be required to 'show its work,' explaining its step-by-step reasoning, potentially offering more accountability than the current system allows.
The legal system, despite its structure, is fundamentally non-deterministic and influenced by human factors. Applying new, equally non-deterministic AI systems to this already unpredictable human process poses a deep philosophical challenge to the notion of law as a computable, deterministic process.
The world has never been truly deterministic, but slower cycles of change made deterministic thinking a less costly error. Today, the rapid pace of technological and social change means that acting as if the world is predictable gets punished much more quickly and severely.
Well-intentioned laws become distorted through layers of interpretation down the chain of command. This 'cascade of rigidity' results in practices that are inefficient and sometimes contrary to the original legal intent, creating perverse outcomes and process bottlenecks.
Citing high rates of appellate court reversals and a 3-5% error rate in criminal convictions revealed by DNA, former Chief Justice McCormack argues the human-led justice system is not as reliable as perceived. This fallibility creates a clear opening for AI to improve accuracy and consistency.
As former Chief Justice, Bridget McCormack had to lobby legislators for funding for improvements like online dispute resolution. Unlike a business, public courts can't use revenue from good performance for R&D, creating a structural barrier to modernizing the justice system.