The quality of the judiciary: Improving the efficiency of the Disciplinary Inspector Service with the help of AI
And to what extent AI can speed up the processing of disciplinary complaints against judges
Restoration of the High Council's of Justice (HCJ) disciplinary function and creation of the Disciplinary Inspector Service (DIS) as part of its secretariat is one of Ukraine's main European integration priorities in the justice field by the end of 2025. The effectiveness of the DIS is currently in question, however, as the huge number of complaints that have not yet been processed will slow down the processing of new ones. In January-April 2024 alone, the HCJ examined 3,883 disciplinary complaints. During the same period, the HCJ received 2973 new complaints. How this problem can be fixed and how artificial intelligence (AI) could help, barrister Andriy Potiomkin told Mind.
On 8 November 2023, the European Commission published a report on Ukraine's progress under the Enlargement Package (prepared for each candidate country separately and consisting of communication on enlargement, recommendations, and status and progress reports – Mind), recommending that the EU Council start negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU.
The report states that despite the russian war of aggression, Ukraine has made significant progress in restoring the HCJ's disciplinary function and laying the foundation for the establishment of the DIS. The European Commission recommended that the Verkhovna Rada use the practice of disciplinary proceedings when implementing anti-corruption reforms (pp. 3, 19-21, 24 of the report).
On 18 March 2024, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the Ukraine Facility Plan, under which the EU will allocate EUR 50 billion in 2024-2027 to finance Ukraine's state budget, boost investment and structural reforms of government agencies.
The Plan provides for restoration of public confidence in the judiciary, in particular by strengthening the system of disciplinary liability of judges, and stipulates that 20% of old disciplinary proceedings (complaints) pending as of 31 December 2023 will be resolved with the involvement of the DIS by the end of 2025 and based on the priority criteria for their consideration set out in Clause 13.7 of the HCJ Procedural Rules (pp. 76, 79, 86 of the Plan).
The research ‘Corruption in Ukraine – 2023: Understanding, Perception, Prevalence’ by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention
The HCJ considers 950 complaints per month on average. That is, by the end of 2025, 2,900 complaints should be resolved with the involvement of the DIS, which is the HCJ's performance indicator for three months.
Long-Term Dynamics
The distant future does not look so promising if we compare the number of complaints received by the HCJ on a monthly basis with the number of complaints considered in the same period.
In the first quarter of 2024, more than 2050 complaints were distributed among the Council members. On average, the HCJ receives about 700 disciplinary complaints every month. Along with this, as mentioned above, the HCJ examines approximately 950 complaints per month.
With this in mind, while in April 2024, 14,450 complaints were pending before the HCJ (including new ones), 13,500 complaints remained after consideration.
If the rates of receipt and processing remain unchanged, the HCJ will have 14,200 complaints under consideration in May 2024, and 13,250 ones will remain after processing. In June 2024, these figures will be 13,950 and 13,000 complaints, respectively.
Thus, according to the HCJ's performance indicators, it will take 4 years and 7 months for the latter to break even in October 2028.
The speed and quality of complaint resolution have their own objective optimal ratio, and violation of this ratio will not lead to anything good. Disciplinary inspectors can certainly improve the current performance of the HCJ, but there is a reasonable limit to such improvement.
International partners and Ukrainian society would not be ready to wait over four years for these complaints to be resolved. In this regard, the HCJ is going to face strong political pressure.
Parliamentary Assistance
The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy can help, in particular, by initiating a bill that would require all actors who filed disciplinary complaints before 19 October 2023 (the date of entry into force of the laws restoring the HCJ's disciplinary function) to confirm the relevance of their complaint within two months by a simple letter. If not confirmed, the HCJ may not consider such complaints and dispose of their materials.
As is known, the distribution of disciplinary complaints and complaints against decisions to bring a judge to disciplinary responsibility has not been carried out for more than two years. Therefore, entities filing disciplinary complaints may have lost interest in their consideration.
Some of these complaints have expired, some judges have already resigned, and some have been found guilty or acquitted in criminal proceedings under the circumstances described in the complaints.
It is likely that more than half of the very old disciplinary complaints will be removed from the HCJ's consideration in this way, and its members and disciplinary inspectors will focus on resolving important urgent issues.
Capabilities Artificial Intelligence
We live in a time of continuous acceleration in the development of intelligent systems and technologies. The artificial intelligence revolution is no longer a far-off theoretical future, but an opportunity that we have here and now.
With the support of international organisations, for instance, the HCJ may introduce a service for disciplinary inspectors that will use artificial intelligence algorithms to help improve the efficiency of disciplinary proceedings against judges.
The service will include, in particular, the creation of an online library, containing the texts of all rulings and judgments of disciplinary chambers and the HCJ in disciplinary proceedings against judges, as well as the HCJ's opinions and judgments on appeals against decisions in disciplinary cases against judges, from which AI will select clauses and provisions and draft relevant documents in new proceedings.
Furthermore, such an online library will store the entire practice of the Supreme Court's consideration of cases on appeals against decisions, actions, and inaction of the HCJ, and the service will take it into account in its work.
Similarly, AI can assist in drafting numerous other procedural documents. AI will also help to analyse the practice of disciplinary proceedings and decisions on bringing or refusing to bring judges to disciplinary responsibility.
How can AI help the DIS?
The disciplinary inspector scans and uploads the text of the complaint and the necessary materials to the service, and sets up the appropriate parameters.
In just a few minutes, AI recognises the text, analyses it, finds the maximum number of similar clauses and provisions in the online library, selects the ones that are suitable, adapts them according to the set parameters, and produces the required draft document, including different spellings of its individual sections.
Then, the disciplinary inspector checks the correctness of the AI-generated draft document, changes and/or adds parameters if necessary, and the service either finalises the relevant draft or corrects it manually.
The more draft documents the service creates, the more time and effort disciplinary inspectors will save. The level of content of the online library and the well-designed algorithms of the service will affect the quality of the draft documents prepared by AI.