Minerva Fast Track Research Group
"Artificial Justice"

Our Group applies interdisciplinary methods to the study of automated, artificial, and algorithmic reasoning in law. Members research a wide array of topics ranging from pre-modern fantasies of “justice machines,” the transition from legal logic to legal information science, cultural attitudes towards courtroom tech, to contemporary proposals for AI-powered “lawbots.” Collaboratively, we explore a set of more general issues, including the relationship between normative and empirical expertise, law’s epistemological status vis-à-vis technology and the natural sciences as well as limits and opportunities of legal interdisciplinarity.

Areas of Research

History of Legal Information Science

Law and Large Language Models

Neuro-Symbolic AI and Law

Research Group News

Wijnand van Woerkom receives the Carole Hafner Best Paper Award at ICAIL 2026

The International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL) has honored Wijnand van Woerkom, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Artificial Justice Research Group, with the Carole Hafner Best Paper Award. Wijnand received the award for his paper “Measuring Case-Base Consistency with Monotonicity Metrics,” which he presented at the 2026 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL) in Singapore. The paper is due to appear in the ICAIL Conference Proceedings.

Speaker Series

Artificial Justice

The Speaker Series of the Minerva Fast Track Research Group "Artificial Justice" invites guest speakers who work at the intersection between law, computer science, and the humanities. Neither technical nor juristic knowledge is a prerequisite for participation—the Series is aimed at anyone with an interest in critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on “Law and AI.”   more

Images

Header and photograph of the research group: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law / Johanna Detering

Research Area "History of Legal Information Science": Source: Mehl, Lucien: Automation in the Legal World: From the Machine Processing of Legal Information to the "Law Machine", Symposium on the Mechanisation of the Thought Process, National Physical Laboratory, U.K. 1958, page 776.

Research Area "Law and Large Language Models": Generated on: playground.tensorflow.org

Research Area "Neuro-Symbolic Law and AI": Source: Allen, Layman E. and Caldwell, Mary Ellen: Modern Logic and Judicial Decision Making: A Sketch of One View, Jurimetrics, Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 28, No. 1, Winter 1963, page 264.