The US justice system is a farce, 90% of the time it is merely used as an extortion racket to fund the cops, courts, and local jail. Corruption is rampant, friends of the court regularly get away with breaking the law, and the only two considerations cops use when arresting people is will it make their fragile ego feel better, and will the charges result in a significant profit for the court/cops.
The film is framed as sci fi, but this decision underlines that right now, any judge has the freedom to replace themselves with a chatbot, in part or in full.
Well, at least they don't expose themselves to civil liability by doing so. The system is generally designed so that judges don't have to answer to the participants in the cases they are presiding over. That doesn't mean they don't answer to anyone.
In U.S. history only 8 federal judges have been convicted and removed. In a normal year the number is zero, out of ~870. For state judges, about 11 are removed per year out of ~30,000. They can be held accountable, but it takes something extraordinary, and worst case they retire early. If a judge confesses to full self-replacement that might do it. Too many load bearing emdashes wouldn't be enough.
All officers of the court have various forms of immunity. All of the rights, rules, and statutes they are required by law to uphold only goes as far as how much of that in group someone is, or how much money someone has to uphold their rights when infringed upon.
In practice the entire system has become political, corrupted or both. As a result, the only rights most people have are those where officers of a court are only limited by where their immunity ends. They can and do violate the law and ignore large parts of it if it suits them.
Assuming someone has the resources to even get any oversight at all, in most cases those involved will investigate each other and decide they have done nothing wrong. Even in the unlikely event that someone proves an illegal act, they will just claim immunity.
To be removed as a judge you have to do shit so egregious, like taking kickbacks from the prison industry to sentence children into their custody and work programs, to the point it is an open secret (where your own Facebook shows you hanging out with the CEOs of such companies, and your conviction rates and sentencing for juveniles is so far on the curve it couldn't possibly be coincidence) and even then it will take YEARS, all the while you go on doing it.
"Probably" would be impeached? The bar for impeachment and recall would appear to be exceptionally high, often rising to the level of "national news coverage and extended outrage" (witness the judge on the Brock case).
This was an interesting and engrossing film with an attractive sci-fi/AI setting, whose moral and theme, of course, had absolutely nothing at all to do with AI.
Different rules for the rulers and the proles has been a big part of life on Earth for eternity. Why shouldn't we be surprised that this judge thinks it's okay to do things that a grade schooler can't.
Right, there needs to be procedural grounds for appeal, and this case is entirely about the judge violating procedural rules by delegating away their judgement. It's a perfect example of a case for an appeals court.
This is just how the US legal system works. When a judge has made a terrible decision for dumb reasons, you appeal it, you don’t sue the judge. There’d be a similar result if you sued a judge for ruling against you at the instructions of their cult leader or something.
But did the judge make the decision?
I think there's a real question of whether this is a failure of due process rights. But I also think supreme Court Justices need to be awake for the court to actually hear arguments, so what do I know.
That is what the article and judgement was about- they can certainly use that argument to appeal the case, but not to hold the judge in the case personally liable.
But of course a court can't dismiss someone's complaint on the grounds that they're nuts; in order to rule on the substance of this case, a court would have to conduct new hearings to gather all the details about the original hearing in which AI was allegedly used. The purpose of judicial immunity is to push all objections to judicial decisions through the appellate courts, which don't have to re-hear everything before issuing a ruling.
The wasn't a single opinion presented in that very short article. It was largely quoting and restating what happened- the judge isn't personally liable via civil suit.
Other articles by volokh might be intentionally incendiary (I haven't read them) but this one is as bland as bland gets.
In practice the entire system has become political, corrupted or both. As a result, the only rights most people have are those where officers of a court are only limited by where their immunity ends. They can and do violate the law and ignore large parts of it if it suits them.
Assuming someone has the resources to even get any oversight at all, in most cases those involved will investigate each other and decide they have done nothing wrong. Even in the unlikely event that someone proves an illegal act, they will just claim immunity.
You would probably have a really good shot at an appeal, too.
But of course a court can't dismiss someone's complaint on the grounds that they're nuts; in order to rule on the substance of this case, a court would have to conduct new hearings to gather all the details about the original hearing in which AI was allegedly used. The purpose of judicial immunity is to push all objections to judicial decisions through the appellate courts, which don't have to re-hear everything before issuing a ruling.
Other articles by volokh might be intentionally incendiary (I haven't read them) but this one is as bland as bland gets.