Judge relying wholly on AI in order is covered by judicial immunity, court rules

AngryData•3 minutes ago

The US justice system is a farce, 90% of the time it is merely used as an extortion racket to fund the cops, courts, and local jail. Corruption is rampant, friends of the court regularly get away with breaking the law, and the only two considerations cops use when arresting people is will it make their fragile ego feel better, and will the charges result in a significant profit for the court/cops.

dgrin91•20 minutes ago

I just read a story of a guy trying to prompt inject his court submissions to win because he thought the court was using AI. I guess he just got the wrong judge: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/suspecting-court...

__s•about 2 hours ago

This is a film, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_(2026_film)

delichon•about 2 hours ago

The film is framed as sci fi, but this decision underlines that right now, any judge has the freedom to replace themselves with a chatbot, in part or in full.

rcxdude•about 1 hour ago

Well, at least they don't expose themselves to civil liability by doing so. The system is generally designed so that judges don't have to answer to the participants in the cases they are presiding over. That doesn't mean they don't answer to anyone.

delichon•about 1 hour ago

In U.S. history only 8 federal judges have been convicted and removed. In a normal year the number is zero, out of ~870. For state judges, about 11 are removed per year out of ~30,000. They can be held accountable, but it takes something extraordinary, and worst case they retire early. If a judge confesses to full self-replacement that might do it. Too many load bearing emdashes wouldn't be enough.

laughing_man•about 1 hour ago

That's the key point here. You won't be able to sue a judge who does that, but he could still be impeached. And probably would be.

You would probably have a really good shot at an appeal, too.

ButlerianJihad•27 minutes ago

This was an interesting and engrossing film with an attractive sci-fi/AI setting, whose moral and theme, of course, had absolutely nothing at all to do with AI.

ferngodfather•about 1 hour ago

This is not real life.

xhkkffbf•about 1 hour ago

Different rules for the rulers and the proles has been a big part of life on Earth for eternity. Why shouldn't we be surprised that this judge thinks it's okay to do things that a grade schooler can't.

freejazz•31 minutes ago

The way to challenge a judge's opinion is to appeal it, not personally sue the judge. These responses are histrionic and misinformed.

FireBeyond•10 minutes ago

Appeals are not automatic. Another judge has to decide whether you have standing to appeal - you can't just say "don't like the result, redo!"

SpicyLemonZest•about 1 hour ago

This is just how the US legal system works. When a judge has made a terrible decision for dumb reasons, you appeal it, you don’t sue the judge. There’d be a similar result if you sued a judge for ruling against you at the instructions of their cult leader or something.

abeppu•21 minutes ago

But did the judge make the decision? I think there's a real question of whether this is a failure of due process rights. But I also think supreme Court Justices need to be awake for the court to actually hear arguments, so what do I know.

zdragnar•7 minutes ago

That is what the article and judgement was about- they can certainly use that argument to appeal the case, but not to hold the judge in the case personally liable.

SpicyLemonZest•7 minutes ago

There would be a real question if the judge in fact used AI. The plaintiff's complaint (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nvd.176...) makes it pretty clear that he's just nuts and had no real reason to think she did.

But of course a court can't dismiss someone's complaint on the grounds that they're nuts; in order to rule on this case in detail, a court would have to conduct new hearings to gather all the details about the original hearing in which AI was allegedly used. The purpose of the rule is to push objections to judicial decisions through the appellate courts, which do not have to re-hear all the details before issuing a ruling.

freejazz•28 minutes ago

Volokh Conspiracy is just culture war ragebait.

zdragnar•9 minutes ago

The wasn't a single opinion presented in that very short article. It was largely quoting and restating what happened- the judge isn't personally liable via civil suit.

Other articles by volokh might be intentionally incendiary (I haven't read them) but this one is as bland as bland gets.

Judge relying wholly on AI in order is covered by judicial immunity, court rules

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (23 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews