AI in Brazilian Courts: A Critical Examination of Digital Justice’s Promises and Continuities

Abstract (English)

The year 2025 has been heralded as the dawn of a new era in Brazilian law and judicial practices. The overwhelming introduction of generative artificial intelligence in courtrooms has solidified earlier, more cautious yet consistent initiatives that—since at least the isolation requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic—had signaled the definitive union between law and digital tools. Brazil hosts the world’s largest procedural repository and must constantly balance efficiency and standardization to sustain the Democratic Rule of Law. In this Herculean task, computers have been central to transformative aspirations for decades, envisioned as tools to eliminate delays and steer justice away from the dangers of casuistry. Though these ambitions date back to the 1988 Federal Constitution’s judicial reforms, and socio-technical transformations (e.g., near-total digitization of case filings) have indeed occurred, contemporary discourse remains dominated by rhetoric of novelty, rupture, and revolution. This presentation critically interrogates these narratives through a Foucauldian-inspired anthropological lens. Rejecting the field’s imposed acceleration, we pause to ask: What does this purported marriage of justice and ‘intelligent’ computing truly entail? By examining the spaces the legal environment has carved out for machine intelligence in Brazil's proliferating innovation and governance documents, I argue for examining both past-imagined futures and their materialized outcomes. What roles have digital machines already played in democratizing justice? How do these technological 'ruptures' preserve earlier legal practices? Ultimately, how does law endure as a discursive formation and power-knowledge space—shaped by, yet resisting, its digital encounters?