From Brian Flanagan, Guilherme Almeida, Daniel Chen & Angela Gitahi, The Rule of Law or the Rule of Robots? Nationally Representative Survey Evidence from Kenya:
We explore the legitimacy of chatbot law clerks by conducting a nationally representative survey experiment of Kenya, a society whose views on such matters have particular salience in light of the Kenyan judiciary's willingness to test the effects of e-justice measures. Our choice of population also responds to criticism that experimental jurisprudence has so far been focused on W.E.I.R.D. (White Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic) populations (Tobia 2024), which have been found to deviate systematically from global trends along several metrics (Henrich et al 2010; Barrett 2020)….
The study compared the responses of four nationally representative cohorts (totalling 2,246) to a suite of four test cases, each of which featured the same fact situation but which varied according to a) whether the verdict aligned with either the law's text or its purpose, and b) whether the verdict relied on the legal analysis of either a human or an artificial law clerk….
For instance, the "No Bodabodas in the mall" vignette was presented as follows:
The government has issued a rule: "It shall be an offence to ride a bodaboda in a shopping mall". This rule is intended to prevent injuries to shoppers. {Bodabodas are bicycle or motorcycle taxis that are common in Kenya.}
Then, we described a situation in which an agent had acted contrary to the law's text but consistently with its purpose:
Witnessing a violent attack inside a mall, Martin rides his bodaboda into the mall to stop it. Martin is later charged with the offence of riding a bodaboda in a shopping mall.
Finally, we described a legal proceeding that varied both according to its outcome and according to the source of the legal research on which the court relied:
The court, guided by legal research performed by a legal researcher/special computer program, decides that Martin violated/did not violate the rule.
Participants were asked to indicate their agreement with the sentence, "The court's decision is legitimate", on a 5-point Likert scale….
