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The latest issue of the Journal of Judicial Administration (Volume 29 Part 1) contains the following material:

Articles

Protecting Victims and Vulnerable Witnesses Participating in Royal Commissions: Lessons from the 2016–2017 Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory – Taylah Cramp and Anita Mackay

The truth-finding function of Royal Commissions often leads them to seek the participation of victims and vulnerable witnesses (V&VWs) to learn about their experiences of the wrongdoing being investigated. There are numerous recent examples of Royal Commissions that have done this, including the 2017 Federal Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse and the 2016 Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. This article examines the processes employed by the joint federal and Northern Territory Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory. It seeks to draw out the lessons that may be learnt for future Royal Commissions involving V&VWs. The Northern Territory Royal Commission is informative because the Commissioners prioritised the needs of V&VWs in some unique ways, arguably achieving restorative justice for the V&VWs who participated.

Robo-Judge: Common Law Theory and the Artificially Intelligent Judiciary – Meena Hanna

The intersection between technology and the legal industry is exponentially growing. Historically, such technological advancements were largely confined to legal information retrieval and legal infrastructure. However, the fourth industrial revolution, and the seamless transition towards the fifth industrial revolution, usher significant advancements in computational law. These advancements in the automation of legal analysis through artificial intelligence are so disruptive and pervasive that they now purportedly threaten to invade the space of judicial reasoning. This raises the critical question of whether artificially intelligent judicial reasoning can be reconciled with the common law framework and common law theory more generally. To answer this question, this article canvasses the intersection of technology and the law, the application of artificial intelligence to judicial reasoning including developments to date, and the trajectory of research in this field. Against this context, this article then considers the theories of pre-eminent common law philosophers, and ultimately concludes that artificially intelligent judicial reasoning cannot be reconciled with the common law.

For the PDF version of the table of contents, click here: JJA Vol 29 No 1 Contents.

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