Trends 2024: Moving courts and communities forward
July 31, 2024 -- The 2024 edition of Trends in State Courts highlights innovative practices in artificial intelligence (AI), data collection, and action planning. This annual, peer-reviewed publication from NCSC features articles showcasing how courts provide both leadership in, and connections to, the communities they serve.
"Courts are cornerstones of their communities," notes NCSC President Mary C. McQueen in the publication's introduction. “They must be proactive to ensure that the connections to their communities remain adaptable to user needs."
Trends 2024 explores the crucial role of state court leadership in the era of AI. Laks Kattalai and Jessica Lewis Kelly of New Jersey emphasize the importance of proactive engagement and strategic leadership from courts to shape this evolving landscape, support access and fairness, and advance justice during rapid technological change.
NCSC authors Shay Cleary, Sarah Gibson, Andrea Miller, and Diane Robinson delve into the intersection of data governance and AI. They observe that "state courts serve and shape several communities: internal consumers (judges and court staff), lawyers, and self-represented or unrepresented court users and the public. Generative AI has the potential to fundamentally change relationships with each of these groups, requiring a recalibration of expectations, roles, and responsibilities."
Trends 2024 also emphasizes the importance of action planning to improve access to justice and successfully implement policies, practices, and programs. Other articles examine the perception of fairness and the quality of connections between courts, families, and social services through the lens of remote hearings, restorative justice, and multidisciplinary representation in the child welfare system.
Articles in the 2024 edition of Trends in State Courts include:
- Artificial Intelligence: The Need for State Court Leadership
- Data Governance and AI in State Courts
- Court Navigation Programs: Providing Connections and Support Across the Legal and Behavioral Health Systems
- Litigant Empowerment Through Choice? Insights from an Ongoing Study of Remote versus In-Person Family Court Hearings
- Customer-Centered Juvenile Justice
- Multidisciplinary Representation for Parents in Dependency Cases
- Transforming Justice: Navigating Data Challenges in Domestic Violence Courts
- Action Planning to Advance Systemic Change
- From Classroom to Courtroom: Engaging Today's Students to Become Tomorrow's Court Professionals
- PHASE: A Practical Approach to Implementation
Read Trends 2024 in its entirety at ncsc.org/trends.
AI RRT offers interim guidance on deepfakes
The AI Rapid Response Team has released new interim guidance to help courts navigate the growing threat of deepfakes—convincing false pictures, videos, audio, and other digital information. Advances in AI technology have made it increasingly easy and affordable to manipulate digital evidence, causing evidentiary challenges in court proceedings. This guidance highlights how deepfakes can affect court proceedings, and whether current evidentiary rules are sufficient to address deepfakes.
Read all AI RRT interim guidance on our website.