Smart Courts: AI can improve India's justice delivery with human oversight

The Supreme Court recently released a draft titled “Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Courts 2026”, which is an important framework for governing the integration of AI into India’s judicial system. The proposal comes at a time when courts are grappling with an enormous backlog of more than 55 million cases across the system. Delayed justice imposes a substantial social and economic cost, making the search for technological solutions increasingly urgent.

 

The regulations extend across the Supreme Court, high courts, subordinate courts, tribunals and statutory commissions. They permit the use of AI in a range of administrative and adjudicatory functions, including case filing and registration, cause-list preparation, scheduling matters, issuing notices, maintaining records, and computing fees. Another important area where AI can help is in improving the functioning of court registries. The recent concern over the Supreme Court Registry regarding similar cases being listed before different Benches has raised questions about consistency in internal scrutiny and listing procedures. AI-assisted systems can help standardise these processes, reducing the scope for arbitrary or inconsistent handling of cases and enhancing transparency, predictability and equal treatment of similarly placed litigants.

 

The Supreme Court already has AI-assisted tools such as Supace (Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Courts Efficiency) to help judges with legal research, and Suvas (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software) for translating judicial documents into at least 18 Indian languages. Other countries have adopted similar tools. Singapore uses generative AI assistants to help self-represented litigants understand their rights and tribunal procedures, while Estonia employs AI-assisted systems for transcription, document analysis, and anonymisation. China has gone further with its “smart courts”, leveraging machine learning to automate legal research, draft documents, and even check for errors in verdicts. However, concern over transparency and algorithmic bias in judicial processes remains.

 

In this regard, the draft seeks to draw a clear distinction between assistance and adjudication. AI may support judicial work, but it cannot perform judicial functions. The regulations prohibit AI from determining judicial outcomes, pronouncing judgments, imposing sentences, assessing witness credibility, predicting criminal behaviour, evaluating bail eligibility, or assigning risk scores to litigants. Judicial authority remains exclusively with human judges.

 

AI-generated output must be treated as advisory and remain subject to independent human review. Such safeguards are necessary because AI tools are not error-free. Recent incidents involving lawyers submitting AI-generated documents with fictitious case citations have highlighted the risks of unverified AI content. The draft, therefore, emphasises human oversight, explainability, transparency, accountability, auditability and data protection through the creation of a permanent “Apex Body” at the Supreme Court, comprising judges, technical experts, cybersecurity specialists, academicians and government representatives.

 

Yet the framework will succeed only if implementation matches ambition. Judicial officers, the registry personnel, lawyers and other court staffers, especially in the lower courts, will require extensive training to understand the capabilities and limitations of AI tools. Meaningful oversight is possible only when those supervising the technology possess sufficient technical literacy. Strong cybersecurity standards and a robust protection of sensitive judicial data will be critical. Hence, AI can help courts process cases faster, manage records more effectively, and improve access to justice, while ensuring that human judgment remains firmly in command.