Important to note that this was not a decision on the merits. The court didn’t find that the decision was written by AI; just that the facts alleged would be covered by judicial immunity. Proper action is to appeal, and file a grievance with the Nevada Council of Judicial Discipline, possibly also the Nevada Bar Association. Those institutions take these things seriously, and the judge can end up with her license suspended or even disbarred. A license suspension, even a short one, is very serious for a judge. A judge is forbidden from having any other employment, so a judge under suspension isn’t getting a salary and can’t get other employment. So it’s a pretty significant monetary penalty.
EDIT: Yeah this plaintiff is nuts. His complaint, linked by a response to my comment and in other places, is just bizarre. I would highly doubt any allegations he might make.This guy has apparently been suing a bunch of judges in the family courts in Las Vegas. A lot of those proceedings appear to be online: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsKMpjAPcB2vRRCMtdEb1...
I find it telling that Volokh fails to link to the original complaint (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nvd.176...), which gives you a pretty good sense of why the court went down the route of foreclosing any second bite at this particular apple; and fails to mention the plaintiff has a history of filing against judges he appears to feel have wronged him, to the point that he was declared a vexatious litigant in Nevada and sanctioned in California for "impugn[ing] the integrity of the very system of justice in which they serve without a solid basis in both fact and law." Admittedly there's no requirement that a plaintiff be sympathetic to be right, but still...
If the judge is allowed to outsource their job, can they outsource to anyone? What about to a donor who contributed to the campaign? what about to someone who has a vested interest in the outcome of the judgement?
If outsourcing is permitted, then why have judges in the first place? why not just have an AI and let it do all the work and save money for the govt?
Several commenters point out that while suing the judge is not an option, appealing the judge's ruling remains an option.
So just because a judge completely abdicates their responsibility to use their own judgment, the person now needs to go through a lengthy and expensive appeals process? And even if the judge is sanctioned or removed from the bench, that only prevents future harm; it does not actually make whole the person they have already harmed.
I can tolerate some level of immunity -- maybe even beyond qualified immunity -- to protect judges that make good-faith errors. But when they're engaging in blatant misconduct, it seems like absolute immunity is providing more protection than is necessary or warranted.
Starting a new lawsuit against the judge, potentially with its own appeals, is no less expensive and lengthy of a process than appealing the existing case. Allowing such suits would increase costs to everyone involved, not decrease them.
> And even if the judge is sanctioned or removed from the bench, that only prevents future harm; it does not actually make whole the person they have already harmed.
Yes this is a general problem with misconduct by police, prosecutors, and judges. A lot of times you are fortunate simply to win the case, but usually don't get any compensation for harm caused by the arrest, incarceration before trial, and cost of defense.
I would support dropping immunity and allowing private lawsuits when misconduct is proven through existing processes. But more-so it is very frustrating to me how often the American justice system focuses on punishing the perpetrator while doing little to make the victim whole. The victim should not be required to file a separate private lawsuit to obtain compensation, it should always be part of a criminal prosecution and other disciplinary processes.
If the judge's order was AI slop then presumably it wouldn't withstand an appeal. So one is left wondering why they didn't appeal it in the first place. Why file a whole separate lawsuit? That's going to be even lengthier and more expensive than an appeal.
In fact, a successful appeal might have helped a subsequent lawsuit against the judge since questions like "was AI used?" would have already been litigated. Instead they filed a new lawsuit where those questions won't even be considered until the immunity question is addressed.
It seems like a very strange legal strategy, particularly since from what I can tell the plaintiff is himself an experienced lawyer.
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).
Funny this comes up because I just watched it last night. It has 24% on Rotten Tomatoes which is pretty accurate. Not quite sure why it was made or why the actors involved signed up for it.
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.
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.
interesting. criminal law is hardly organized enough to be extortion; more like 'success' via chaos, or throwing spaghetti against a wall at the right or wrong time, is my guess. not sure where you think profit comes into that last thing you wrote. you seem pretty focused on criminal law here; civil law is generally really far uglier and more corrupt in this country than any other. I mean stuff like suing and divorce.
The plaintiff in this case lost and decided that the judge used AI to rule against him. However in his own complaint, which was drafted by AI, he says that it was permissible for the judge to do so... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71063603/phillips-v-par...
Importantly, the judge did not actually use AI. She just followed the law. In the original family court case the plaintiff had submitted an AI drafted filing which did not include any (real) legal citations supporting the legal arguments made and was given the opportunity to amend but refused to do so. So the judge ruled against him on all 5 claims.
EDIT. This all supposedly happened back in mid 2023... the AI tools the plaintiff alleged the judge used didn't get released until 2024.
EDIT 2. The plaintiff actually says he wants an AI judge.
EDIT 3. If you read the complaint in full it's clear he has severe mental issues and doesn't grasp how the law works. Severe jurisdictional confusion and lack of understanding about basic trial processes (even though he claims to be admitted to the Supreme Court Bar). Every judge in America would rule against him.
This is how you get vigilante justice. It is only held back by people believing that the state will treat them fairly in a court. Once the majority no longer believe that, you get chaos. I am entirely sure we do not want that. The correct action would be to make an EXTREME example of this judge: disbarment, prison, etc...
> This is how you get vigilante justice. It is only held back by people believing that the state will treat them fairly in a court.
That's the threat at least, but do the majority actually feel that way today? Given how frequently our legal system has denied people justice and the scale at which that's been happening, I wonder how much of a threat it really is in our current environment. I'm not sure what it is that keeps people from trying to take matters into their own hands more often. Maybe it's learned helplessness, despair, fear, or lack of opportunity, but whatever it is it's been pretty effective considering the kinds of harms that people have suffered with no recourse to be made whole through the courts.
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.
IANAL, but my understanding is that Judicial immunity in the US is absolute; if a Judge orders the police to beat up a defense attorney, they cannot be sued for it[1].
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.
And if an appellate court got involved and somehow found a judge outsourced their judging to an AI, it's hard to imagine them accepting that. A "polite suggestion" that the relevant bar or judicial association look in to something, coming from a federal Circuit Court of Appeals, is neither polite nor a suggestion, and will receive the due gravity of a "polite suggestion" coming from one of the most powerful bodies in the country.
And there are processes for disciplining and even removing judges who fail to uphold their responsibilities. A private lawsuit simply isn't venue for doing so.
>> When a judge has made a terrible decision for dumb reasons, you appeal it
This is not how the legal system works. You need grounds for the Appeal - such as procedural - AND need to get another court to agree with your grounds AND be willing to have the case heard again. None of these are gimmes, and they all take time and money.
This definitely how the US system works. The core job of the appeal court is correct errors of law.
Your other criticisms are valid, such as time, money and there is definitely deference to lower court judges. But the recourse for a judge misunderstanding the law (for AI or any reason) is the appeal process.
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.
Important to note that this was not a decision on the merits. The court didn’t find that the decision was written by AI; just that the facts alleged would be covered by judicial immunity. Proper action is to appeal, and file a grievance with the Nevada Council of Judicial Discipline, possibly also the Nevada Bar Association. Those institutions take these things seriously, and the judge can end up with her license suspended or even disbarred. A license suspension, even a short one, is very serious for a judge. A judge is forbidden from having any other employment, so a judge under suspension isn’t getting a salary and can’t get other employment. So it’s a pretty significant monetary penalty.
EDIT: Yeah this plaintiff is nuts. His complaint, linked by a response to my comment and in other places, is just bizarre. I would highly doubt any allegations he might make.This guy has apparently been suing a bunch of judges in the family courts in Las Vegas. A lot of those proceedings appear to be online: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsKMpjAPcB2vRRCMtdEb1...
I find it telling that Volokh fails to link to the original complaint (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nvd.176...), which gives you a pretty good sense of why the court went down the route of foreclosing any second bite at this particular apple; and fails to mention the plaintiff has a history of filing against judges he appears to feel have wronged him, to the point that he was declared a vexatious litigant in Nevada and sanctioned in California for "impugn[ing] the integrity of the very system of justice in which they serve without a solid basis in both fact and law." Admittedly there's no requirement that a plaintiff be sympathetic to be right, but still...
I just read a story of a guy trying to prompt inject his court submissions to win because he thought the court was using AI. I guess he just got the wrong judge: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/suspecting-court...
If the judge is allowed to outsource their job, can they outsource to anyone? What about to a donor who contributed to the campaign? what about to someone who has a vested interest in the outcome of the judgement?
If outsourcing is permitted, then why have judges in the first place? why not just have an AI and let it do all the work and save money for the govt?
A whole lot of logical leaps in your questions.
Yes, judges can (and have) "outsourced" writing court opinions. SCOTUS and lower courts have done this with law clerks since the earliest days.
Yes, they can allow interested parties to do so. You can argue they shouldn't, but that's a different issue from legality.
The next paragraph is just a wild leap.
Several commenters point out that while suing the judge is not an option, appealing the judge's ruling remains an option.
So just because a judge completely abdicates their responsibility to use their own judgment, the person now needs to go through a lengthy and expensive appeals process? And even if the judge is sanctioned or removed from the bench, that only prevents future harm; it does not actually make whole the person they have already harmed.
I can tolerate some level of immunity -- maybe even beyond qualified immunity -- to protect judges that make good-faith errors. But when they're engaging in blatant misconduct, it seems like absolute immunity is providing more protection than is necessary or warranted.
Starting a new lawsuit against the judge, potentially with its own appeals, is no less expensive and lengthy of a process than appealing the existing case. Allowing such suits would increase costs to everyone involved, not decrease them.
> And even if the judge is sanctioned or removed from the bench, that only prevents future harm; it does not actually make whole the person they have already harmed.
Yes this is a general problem with misconduct by police, prosecutors, and judges. A lot of times you are fortunate simply to win the case, but usually don't get any compensation for harm caused by the arrest, incarceration before trial, and cost of defense.
I would support dropping immunity and allowing private lawsuits when misconduct is proven through existing processes. But more-so it is very frustrating to me how often the American justice system focuses on punishing the perpetrator while doing little to make the victim whole. The victim should not be required to file a separate private lawsuit to obtain compensation, it should always be part of a criminal prosecution and other disciplinary processes.
If the judge's order was AI slop then presumably it wouldn't withstand an appeal. So one is left wondering why they didn't appeal it in the first place. Why file a whole separate lawsuit? That's going to be even lengthier and more expensive than an appeal.
In fact, a successful appeal might have helped a subsequent lawsuit against the judge since questions like "was AI used?" would have already been litigated. Instead they filed a new lawsuit where those questions won't even be considered until the immunity question is addressed.
It seems like a very strange legal strategy, particularly since from what I can tell the plaintiff is himself an experienced lawyer.
This is a film, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_(2026_film)
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.
That's the key point here. You won't be able to sue a judge who does that, but he could still be impeached. And probably would be.
You would probably have a really good shot at an appeal, too.
"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).
It does happen, though, and if this were to occur I think it would happen.
Funny this comes up because I just watched it last night. It has 24% on Rotten Tomatoes which is pretty accurate. Not quite sure why it was made or why the actors involved signed up for it.
> or why the actors involved signed up for it.
People need money
Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson though? They can definitely afford to pick better scripts.
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.
As far as I can tell, the use of AI is alleged but not proven, as the case is dismissed without deciding that point.
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.
interesting. criminal law is hardly organized enough to be extortion; more like 'success' via chaos, or throwing spaghetti against a wall at the right or wrong time, is my guess. not sure where you think profit comes into that last thing you wrote. you seem pretty focused on criminal law here; civil law is generally really far uglier and more corrupt in this country than any other. I mean stuff like suing and divorce.
The plaintiff in this case lost and decided that the judge used AI to rule against him. However in his own complaint, which was drafted by AI, he says that it was permissible for the judge to do so... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71063603/phillips-v-par...
Importantly, the judge did not actually use AI. She just followed the law. In the original family court case the plaintiff had submitted an AI drafted filing which did not include any (real) legal citations supporting the legal arguments made and was given the opportunity to amend but refused to do so. So the judge ruled against him on all 5 claims.
EDIT. This all supposedly happened back in mid 2023... the AI tools the plaintiff alleged the judge used didn't get released until 2024.
EDIT 2. The plaintiff actually says he wants an AI judge.
EDIT 3. If you read the complaint in full it's clear he has severe mental issues and doesn't grasp how the law works. Severe jurisdictional confusion and lack of understanding about basic trial processes (even though he claims to be admitted to the Supreme Court Bar). Every judge in America would rule against him.
This is how you get vigilante justice. It is only held back by people believing that the state will treat them fairly in a court. Once the majority no longer believe that, you get chaos. I am entirely sure we do not want that. The correct action would be to make an EXTREME example of this judge: disbarment, prison, etc...
> This is how you get vigilante justice. It is only held back by people believing that the state will treat them fairly in a court.
That's the threat at least, but do the majority actually feel that way today? Given how frequently our legal system has denied people justice and the scale at which that's been happening, I wonder how much of a threat it really is in our current environment. I'm not sure what it is that keeps people from trying to take matters into their own hands more often. Maybe it's learned helplessness, despair, fear, or lack of opportunity, but whatever it is it's been pretty effective considering the kinds of harms that people have suffered with no recourse to be made whole through the courts.
This is not real life.
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.
The way to challenge a judge's opinion is to appeal it, not personally sue the judge. These responses are histrionic and misinformed.
Appeals are not automatic. Another judge has to decide whether you have standing to appeal - you can't just say "don't like the result, redo!"
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.
Doesn't seem that way for people with money though.
Yes, and? Lawsuits aren't automatic and you can't just say "don't like the result, redo!" in them either.
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.
The judge did make the decision to outsource to an LLM. This isn't new and isn't too different from tossing a coin.
IANAL, but my understanding is that Judicial immunity in the US is absolute; if a Judge orders the police to beat up a defense attorney, they cannot be sued for it[1].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireles_v._Waco
There would be a real question if the judge in fact used AI. The plaintiff's complaint (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nvd.176...) makes it pretty clear that he's just nuts and had no real reason to think she did.
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.
Exactly.
And if an appellate court got involved and somehow found a judge outsourced their judging to an AI, it's hard to imagine them accepting that. A "polite suggestion" that the relevant bar or judicial association look in to something, coming from a federal Circuit Court of Appeals, is neither polite nor a suggestion, and will receive the due gravity of a "polite suggestion" coming from one of the most powerful bodies in the country.
either the judge made the decision (in which case he has immunity) or he didn't (in which case he isn't the right person to sue)
the correct steps are appeals in the merit and disciplinary action against the judge
And there are processes for disciplining and even removing judges who fail to uphold their responsibilities. A private lawsuit simply isn't venue for doing so.
>> When a judge has made a terrible decision for dumb reasons, you appeal it
This is not how the legal system works. You need grounds for the Appeal - such as procedural - AND need to get another court to agree with your grounds AND be willing to have the case heard again. None of these are gimmes, and they all take time and money.
This definitely how the US system works. The core job of the appeal court is correct errors of law.
Your other criticisms are valid, such as time, money and there is definitely deference to lower court judges. But the recourse for a judge misunderstanding the law (for AI or any reason) is the appeal process.
If a judge can outsource judgement, can they outsource to anyone? What about to a campaign donor? what about to a victim or the accused?
Posting the same questions multiple times is bad form.
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Volokh Conspiracy is just culture war ragebait.
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.