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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the conception, applications and uses of "predictive justice" tools, that aim at harmonizing decision-making in the legal field. It is based on a survey (N = 17) conducted in France amongst both the producers and users of one of these tools.

Paper long abstract

“Predictive justice” tools (Cohen et al, 2020), which enable the anticipation of likely outcomes of a case based on its characteristics, have been at the center of numerous debates (Garapon, Lassègue, 2018). While these technologies could help standardize decisions across the country and/or within a given court (Chen, Spamann, 2016), such standardization conflicts with legal norms (Dumoulin, 2022) and values (particularly the concept of the uniqueness of each case). “Predictive justice” tools are therefore widely criticized and rarely used by judges, even when they have access to them (Brayne, Christin, 2021 ; Licoppe, Dumoulin, 2019).

In France, despite some pilot projects (Vergès, Vial, 2022), these tools are not used in the courts. However, they are used by lawyers, who employ them particularly in mediation processes, which help reach an agreement between the parties and thus avoid going before a judge. In this sense, the use of “predictive justice” by lawyers could indeed facilitate standardization of outcomes in cases where negotiation is possible.

This paper examines the nature of this harmonization. It shows that the results produced by “predictive justice” are based on a categorization (Bowker, Star, 2000) that is sometimes oversimplified, which imposes numerous limitations on the consideration of the specificities of individual situations. It also examines how lawyers adopt these tools, and establishes that lawyers do not simply accept the tools’ results at face value, meaning that the tools do not automatically produce the standardization they aim for.