The Centre for Law, Technology and Society is delighted to announce that Faculty members Prof. Jena McGill and Dr.Amy Salyzyn have received the 2021 Martin Felsky Award for excellence in Canadian open legal commentary for their article “Judging by the Numbers: Judicial Analytics, the Justice System and its Stakeholders”
The Martin Felsky Award was created to honour Dr. Martin Felsky, who served on the CanLII board as both a member and chair, for his commitment to access to legal information in Canada. The Award recognizes Canadian contributions related to legal research or legal technology that are published in open access journals.
Prof. McGill and Dr. Salyzyn’s paper “Judging by the Numbers: Judicial Analytics, the Justice System and its Stakeholders” considers the impact that judicial analytics may have on the public, the judiciary and the legal profession. Judicial analytics involves the use of advanced technologies, like machine learning and natural language processing, to quickly analyze publicly available data about judges and judicial decision-making. While, in Canada, judicial analytics tools are as yet at the early stages of development and use, such tools are likely to become more powerful, more accurate and more accessible in the near-to-medium future, resulting in unprecedented public insight into judges and the work of judging. This article identifies possible benefits, including increased transparency into the work of judging, and risks, including the propagation of inaccurate or misleading information about judges. The article suggests that voluntary third-party certification and the production of credible public tools can provide meaningful ways to balance these benefits and risks and calls on judicial regulators to consider how information made available through judicial analytics tools may influence their work.
Read the paper here.
Professor Jena McGill is a Faculty member at the Centre for Law, Technology, and Society and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa. She conducts research in the areas of Canadian constitutional law (with a focus on equality law); gender and sexuality; women, peace and security in international law; feminist legal theory; and legal technology as a vehicle to promote access to justice. Her work on section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Dr. Amy Salyzyn is a Faculty member at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa. She is an expert in the area of legal ethics, lawyer regulation, the use of technology in the delivery of legal services and access to justice. She teaches Torts and Dispute Resolution and Professional Responsibility in the first-year program, as well as an upper-year seminar in legal ethics.
Congratulations to Prof. McGill and Dr. Salyzyn!