“India should walk on her own shadow, we must have our own development model”
Development and evolution go hand in hand. The evolution of man, development of resources has been done according to the needs of human beings. India is still a developing country, and the innovations are an intrinsic part.
The legislature, executive and judiciary are the main pillars of democracy. The three are no exception to the above rule and still evolving to their best version. If we look precisely into the “judiciary”, it is taking a whizz in respect of development. In the very beginning, the courts work was done manually and typically on pen and paper. Later on, typewriting took place and then computers were introduced, laptops made a way, e-filing and because of this pandemic era, a new concept of virtual hearing is also introduced, and recently, the 'ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE' has been introduced by Hon’ble Shri S.A.Bobde named as 'SUPACE'. This is a complete blend of human and machine intelligence. The curiosity to know and have knowledge about a new thing automatically comes to the human mind. This article, deals with the ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (SUPACE), it's working and uses in the Indian Judiciary.
MEANING OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
In popular usage, artificial intelligence refers to the ability of a computer or machine to mimic the capabilities of the human mind—learning from examples and experience, recognizing objects, understanding and responding to language, making decisions, solving problems—and combining these and other capabilities to perform functions a human might perform. Basically, it is a man-made tool, working according to the set commands and then whatever work is done on it, those particular commands will be saved in it. The saved commands are then used by the software without putting in any extra efforts. The work of this software is of great use, and also, it is a known fact that the pendency of cases in Indian courts is way too high, and a solution for the same was much needed. The Hon’ble Chief Justice Shri S.A. Bobde came up with this new idea of introducing 'SUPACE' and bringing it to reality.
THE SUPACE
Before going into the details of the 'SUPACE', it is essential to know about the reason behind the uniqueness of the name 'SUPACE'. It is the abbreviation for 'Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Courts Efficiency'. It is artificial intelligence that will be proved to be beneficial for the Judges and lawyers of the judiciary by reducing the research time, and connectivity between the cases can also be found in one go. Thus, the delay in delivering the judgments can be reduced to some extent, which is actually the need of the hour.
The working of the same has been explained in the inaugurating ceremony, which itself is a prima facie proof that how efficiently the SUPACE works, and it is an essential asset for the Indian judiciary. The seeds of “SUPACE” were first sown by Justice S.A. Bobde on 26th November 2019. He expressed his view by stating, "We propose to introduce, if possible, a system of artificial intelligence. There are many things which we need to look at before we introduce. We do not want to give the impression that this is ever going to substitute the judges."
After expressing the said views, he then formed a committee which was headed by “Justice L. Nageshwar Rao”. The committee started working on this idea and identified the potentiality of AI in cataloguing all this for more efficacious handling of data at different stage, whether it be in terms of the factual matrix of cases or dynamic research of precedents. And then, in the blink of eyes, final results are already on the floor by 6th April 2021. The committee took just one and a half year approximately to bring this miracle into reality.
The SUPACE has the potential to be a tremendous asset in the justice delivery system in the eventual future. It will likely present more streamlined, cost-effective and time-bound means of bringing tranquil access of FR to justice. Such a system is going to assist judges and court staff, and litigants in several ways by addressing existing bottlenecks resulting in excessive delays.
The SUPACE, in the words of CJI, “System designed to process facts to make them available to judge who wants to know them as an input to his decision making and to enable him to exercise his intelligence his judgment and sense of right or wrong”.
The working of SUPACE can be understood briefly as- firstly, user ID and password are required to login into the software. The portal then opens up, after which the required case is mentioned in the search engine. The search engine delivers its result, and the lengthy judgment is then shown up on the software. The work of the chatbox comes into existence, and the important questions i.e. the facts, issues or related other cases, can be asked or typed, which are then answered on the chatbox. This makes it easy for the respective authorities to get to know exactly what they are looking for, and hence the research work is reduced and everything becomes available. The next step is that summary of the chat, questions asked, and answers given can be made easily available in the hard copy by taking the print out and there the work of “FAQ” comes into existence. This is how briefly the work of the “SUPACE” can be understood.
MAIN FEATURES OF SUPACE
1. Dashboard – It helps to get quick access to recent cases which a user has searched for or visited, i.e. the already searched cases can be made available again to the user without any hassle. The colour codes are also mentioned in the following ways-
Orange – cases which are saved for review
Yellow – when the task is in progress
Red – that it has not been started
2. Search Bar— As the name is suggestive, it is used to search various cases irrespective of it being a case of District Court, High Court or Supreme Court.
3. Chatbox-- This is the main feature around which this whole SUPACE works. When a user searches a judgment in the search box, and the judgment opens up, on the right of the screen, the judgment can be seen on the other side, i.e. the left portion, a chat box appears. Now on the chatbox user can ask questions either by typing text or by voice recognition that what are important facts of the case, issues involved, a chronology of important events, ratio decidendi, which laws are involved etc. After this, the long judgments need not be read in whole, and the important facts, issues etc., can be accessed briefly.
4. NOTEBOOK – It works as a real notebook but inherited in the software. The questions users asked on the chatbox and the answers given can be added to the notebook by simply clicking on the “add” command. This is not restrictive to a single judgment, but many facts from different judgments can be copied and combined together in a single document which can later be used.
5. FAQ – This feature automatically generates the questions and answers that are commonly asked by different persons in the whole of India. The SUPACE understands the pattern and then create questions on the basis of it. After this, the entire summary of questions and answers can also be printed.
6. OTHER FEATURES-- All the major tasks which can be performed by any word processing software, i.e. Microsoft word etc, can be performed by the “SUPACE” as well. For example, search text in file, indexing, bookmarking important facts etc.
HOW SUPACE IS GOING TO ASSIST JUDGES OR REDUCE DELAY IN GIVING JUDGEMENTS?
The work of judges in India heavily centres around processing information, cases coming before the bench as information, brought forth by petitioner which is sometimes quite voluminous. These are then adjudicated by relying upon legal principles, evidence and precedents, which are additional data to be processed and then the result come in the form of final order and judgment.
The precedents on which the judges and lawyers base their judgment or arguments are mostly too large to read, and the connection between the judgments and precedents is also a prime thing that has to be established. In the practical aspect, going through the judgments and reading each and every fact is quite a challenging thing which the judges and lawyers had to face, but this software has made it simple, by putting everything just a command away and they can get the desired information easily and briefly.
Presently, it can translate the language of the document into 11 different languages and also, the committee is working to make it efficient that it can convert the document into those languages which are stated specifically in the 8th schedule of the Indian Constitution. Currently, the process of translation takes months resulting in the stay of trial, and hence the number of days for delivering the judgment is also increased.
SUGGESTION
Initially, the SUPACE will be used in the High court of Bombay and Delhi specifically for criminal matters. So it is suggestive from our side that this trial of SUPACE can be first put into the cases relating to cheque bounce or motor vehicle accident as most of these cases has the same facts, same views and same law points so it can be easy for the judges to get acquainted with the software.
CONCLUSION
The capabilities of “SUPACE” to do all the above-mentioned task makes it a super-efficient tool for aiding the judges, co-staffs and legal practitioners and makes their work easy. It is to be made clear that this system is not going to replace the judges but is going to assist them and making their work more efficient. We hope that the core purpose of the software could be achieved, and as stated by Junior Martin Luther king, “Justice delayed is justice denied” could be worked upon, and the justice can now be delivered as soon as possible.
Disclaimer: Kindly note that the views and opinions expressed are of the author(s) not Law Colloquy.
References:
https://webcast.gov.in/scindia/6apr2021.html
