AI May Translate the Judgment, Never Write It: The Supreme Court Draws Its Line

Article summary

The Supreme Court's Artificial Intelligence Committee released draft Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence in Courts, 2026 for public consultation in June 2026, proposing the first systematic framework for AI in Indian adjudication. The draft would apply across the Supreme Court, High Courts, subordinate courts, tribunals and statutory adjudicatory bodies, with adoption phased at each court's discretion. Its organising principle is a bright line: the power to decide questions of law, fact and justice remains exclusively with judges. AI is permitted for legal research, citation verification, drafting assistance, translation, transcription, case management, scheduling, record management and accessibility, and lawyers and litigants must disclose AI use in pleadings. It is expressly barred from risk scoring, recidivism prediction, bail evaluation and witness credibility assessment, and black-box systems are prohibited in matters affecting personal liberty. Institutionally the draft creates a permanent Apex Body at Supreme Court level with judges, MeitY officials and finance and cybersecurity experts, five specialised committees, and a Centre of Research and Excellence on Artificial Intelligence to evaluate tools. It requires Technical and Ethical Impact Assessments, annual audits, AI registers and incident databases, 24-hour notification of system failures, and restrictions on vendor data retention and model fine-tuning.