At the hallowed halls of the University of Cambridge, India’s Chief Justice BR Gavai didn’t mince words. Technology, he said, is not a magic wand for justice—it’s a double-edged sword. While it opens doors, it can just as easily slam them shut, especially on those already standing on the margins.
Speaking on ‘The Role of Technology to Improve Access to Justice’, the CJI drew a sharp line between digital promise and digital exclusion. In a world rushing toward artificial intelligence and virtual hearings, Gavai pointed out that the very people who need justice the most often lack the internet access, devices, or literacy required to engage with tech-driven systems.
“If tech is to serve justice,” he said, “its foundations must be built on accessibility and inclusion.” A sleek app or a fancy algorithm means little if a tribal litigant can’t log in, or if a Dalit woman doesn’t know it exists.
He didn’t stop at platitudes. Gavai called for robust policy scaffolding to support this digital shift. Courts, he said, need guardrails—standards for using AI, transparency in algorithms, and accountability that doesn’t get lost in code. Without these, we risk replacing human judgment with unchecked automation.
“Digital tools,” he stressed, “should assist judicial reasoning, not override it.”
Yet, not all is bleak. The Chief Justice held up video conferencing as a real victory. “A lawyer in rural Bihar or Maharashtra no longer needs a train ticket to Delhi to stand before the Supreme Court,” he noted. And initiatives like SUVAS, which translates legal texts into nine Indian languages, and the National Judicial Data Grid, tracking over 23 crore cases, are beginning to chip away at long-standing barriers.
But Gavai’s message was clear: without deliberate inclusion, the tech-led revolution in law risks becoming another instrument of inequality. The future of justice, he said, must be coded not just in Java or Python—but in the Constitution.
His closing call? A partnership between the judiciary and academia to shape a legal digital future that uplifts the last person in line, not just the first.