OPTIMIZED SYSTEMS

His Honor, Watson

Rebecca Kutzer-Rice | Date: 09-27-11 | Comments

Legal experts believe that IBM's Watson could be a major tool in helping judges interpret legal statutes. The machine could even appear as an expert witness during trials.

After beating human champions at "Jeopardy," IBM�s supercomputer Watson is moving onto even more impressive tasks. Researchers have already applied Watson�s technology to health care, where the computer is capable of aiding quick decisions and even making diagnoses. Now, legal experts think the machine could help judges parse information and eliminate bias during trials.

In a recent article in "The Yale Law Journal," law student Betsy Cooper argues that judges could use Watson to aid in legal interpretation. In new textualism, a legal method with increasing popularity, judges decode legal statutes. Critics of the approach argue that too much personal bias can slip into the decision-making process. Cooper believes Watson may be able to reduce personal opinion and increase the effectiveness of new textualism.

Designed to answer the nuanced questions of "Jeopardy," Watson can process complex data, form answers, and learn from its mistakes. The computer can make probability-based predications and is not subject to personal biases.

In trials of the future, IBM�s Watson could appear on witness stands and in judges� chambers. (Source: IBM)

�His mistakes are not skewed due to political preferences, personal relationships or other sources of human prejudice,� Cooper writes. For these reasons, she suggests that Watson may be able to �perform better than judges at the tasks of statutory interpretation.�

As an example, Cooper cites the Supreme Court case Muscarello v. United States, in which judges argued over whether �carrying a firearm� meant only having a gun on one�s person or if it also included having it in one�s vehicle. According to Cooper, Watson could have saved time and produced a more accurate conclusion.

�Watson could have estimated the frequency with which each connotation arises�including the state law use of �carry� not considered by the actual parties�to determine whether �carry� ordinarily encompasses transportation in vehicles,� she writes.

While Watson�s computational skill does not allow for the ethics-based decisions that judges sometimes must make, the machine could still be an invaluable tool for interpreting the law.

In addition to assisting judges, Watson could also be a new kind of expert witness, others suggest. Equipped with vast knowledge of topics like medicine and physics, Watson could provide bias-free testimony in a variety of cases.