The “Artificial Intelligence Act” Proposal on European e-Justice Domains Through the Lens of User-Focused, User-Friendly and Effective Judicial Protection Principles

Abstract

European e-Justice aims at developing electronic tools to allow national jurisdictions and ECJ to contact through reliable and secure digital channels. The 2019–2023 e-Justice Strategy underlined some new EU general principles directly developed under e-Justice paradigm, deserving particular attention the ones concerning user-focused and user-friendly dimensions. As 2021 is the year where justice digitalization will be under discussion, there is a need to understand how AI will impact on justice fields, not only in MS judicial systems (EU functional jurisdictions, when applying EU law), but also in ECJ, as this disruptive technology is being discussed. The Proposal for an AI Act stresses AI systems intended for the administration of justice should be classified as high-risk, considering their potentially significant impact on effective judicial protection domains. Therefore, this paper intends to understand the need to fully stress AI human-centric approach on justice fields, so effective judicial protection can be deepened through user-focused and user-friendly principles; and to scrutinize, from the e-Justice standpoint, how the Proposal for an AI Act must further address judicial instrumental usage of AI systems, so judicial independence, procedural rights and access to justice are observed in the EU jurisdictional setting.