BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 24. The Second International Conference on Justice in Riyadh this week highlighted the digital revolution in the judicial sector and the transition towards a preventive justice model, TurkicWorld reports via Arab News.
The conference featured more than 50 speakers from among the world’s top experts in the field.
Preventive justice formed a central focus of the second day’s sessions. Pietro Alpekakos, a judge from Greece and an expert with the European Judicial Training Network, affirmed that “justice can begin before a dispute arises,” noting that “mediation, reconciliation and amicable settlements are means to reduce litigation and enhance the judicial experience.”
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, former president of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, presented a methodological vision, saying: “The key question a judge should ask when considering the use of preventive justice is whether there are any drawbacks involved, and what steps should be taken to prevent potential harm.”
Prof. Jauntas Machado, director of the Human Rights Center in Portugal, warned that “excessive regulation and compliance laws harm social and economic life and affect the freedom of individuals and large corporations.”
The artificial intelligence sessions featured extensive discussion on the dual role of technology.
Prof. Gong Baihua, professor of international law at China’s Fudan University, explained that “predictive technologies for risk assessment offer significant services to judges, providing diverse data and analyzing it with extreme accuracy, making prevention and prediction more efficient and higher quality.”
Baihua added that “among the risks of using AI technologies is bias; it must be subject to laws, regulations and values.”
Prof. Jerome Abrams, a member of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section council, explained that “there is currently work on constitutional artificial intelligence, and we must recognize that this is a major challenge.”
On the judicial cooperation front, Michael Wilderspin, former legal advisor to the European Commission, highlighted practical challenges, pointing out that “the period of Britain’s membership in the European Union was sufficient to establish cooperation with bloc countries in civil and commercial judicial procedures, but after exiting the union, some matters now face conflicts between English and European law.”
Nicolas Rouiller, lawyer and partner at SwissLegal Roeller and Associes, noted that “arbitration has become a global system, with 172 countries having signed or at least respecting the New York Convention on the Enforcement of Arbitration.”
He further clarified that “the relationship between the court and arbitrators is one of coordination and cooperation; the court brings the parties together and enforces decisions, while arbitrators relieve some of the burden from court staff.”
