There has been quite a bit of shock this week over new French legislation that bans anyone from publicly revealing the pattern of judges’ behavior in court decisions. Article 33 of the Justice Reform Act would impose a prison sentence of up to five years for anyone who uses the identity of judges or magistrates “with the purpose or effect of evaluating, analyzing, comparing or predicting their actual or alleged professional practices.”
The law seems targeted to a growing number of legal analytics firms in France and elsewhere, which use technology to look for patterns in judicial decisions in order to predict future outcomes. But the law is written broadly, and could also apply to lawyers, legal academics, good government groups, and others who study the courts and judicial decisionmaking.
The new law is wildly disproportionate and draconian — five years in prison for simply analyzing publicly available documents? But the motivation behind it is more understandable than you might think. More after the jump.
Continue reading “Why did France just outlaw legal analytics?”
The Interdependent Third Branch 