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Graphic Truth: Americans' trust in courts plummets
American trust in its judicial system has fallen dramatically, plummeting away from other wealthy nations. New Gallup data shows American confidence in courts hitting a record low of 35% in 2024, placing it far behind the median of OECD countries where majority trust remains intact. The 20-point gap between US and OECD median trust levels in 2024 marks the widest divide since tracking began in 2006.
The 24-percentage-point decline over four years represents one of the steepest drops globally, rivaling decreases seen in countries experiencing political upheaval like Myanmar and Venezuela. This places the United States in concerning company, especially since dramatic institutional trust declines typically coincide with significant political instability or civil unrest.
The erosion of confidence spans political lines, though following different patterns. Among those disapproving of current leadership, trust fell from 46% to 29% since 2021, possibly because of Donald Trump supporters disagreements with the federal indictments brought against him for hush money, racketeering, and Jan. 6. Even more striking, those approving of leadership maintained steady confidence around 62% until 2024, when it dropped sharply to 44%, possibly reflecting dissatisfaction with the immunity Supreme Court ruling which favored Trump.
A computer keyboard with a blue light on it.
US Justice Department vows to bring more cases against AI-generated CSAM
Federal prosecutors at the US Department of Justice are cracking down on AI-generated child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. James Silver, who leads the department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, told Reuters “there’s more to come” following two criminal cases earlier this year.
“What we’re concerned about is the normalization of this,” Silver said. “AI makes it easier to generate these kinds of images, and the more [them] out there, the more normalized this becomes. That’s something that we really want to stymie and get in front of.”
In one such case announced in May, a Wisconsin man was arrested and charged with using Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image model to create and distribute AI-generated CSAM. He allegedly sent the images to a minor too. “Put simply, CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM, and we will hold accountable those who exploit AI to create obscene, abusive, and increasingly photorealistic images of children,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco at the time.
There may be legal complexity in prosecuting some of these cases. The First Amendment does not protect child pornography, but when there’s not an identifiable child in the images in question, prosecutors might have to get creative — likely charging obscenity law violations, which are more subjective.
In a 2002 case, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, a federal judge struck down part of a congressional statute for being overly broad because it prohibited “any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture [that] is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.” In the US, restrictions on speech need to be extremely specific and narrowly tailored to address an issue, or they won’t stand up in court. That legal precedent could place additional strain on prosecutors trying to demonstrate that AI-generated media should not be allowed.Gavel in a courtroom
Repercussions come for AI-generated child porn
The case is novel. It’s the first time that the federal government has brought charges for child porn fully generated by AI. The government said that Anderegg created a trove of 13,000 fake images using the text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, made by the company Stability AI, along with certain add-ons to the technology. This isn’t the first blow-up involving Stable Diffusion, though. In December, Stanford University researchers found that the dataset LAION-5B, used by Stable Diffusion, included 1,679 illegal images of child sexual abuse material.
This case could set a new precedent for an open question: Is AI-generated child pornography — for all intents and purposes under the law — child pornography?
A gavel in a court room.
Legal limbo: Canada, US behind on judicial appointments
There are currently 75 vacancies. Justice Minister Arif Virani took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to defend his government’s appointment record, arguing the Liberals have made judicial appointments “at the fastest pace in history” – a feat, he noted, the Conservatives have never managed to achieve.
The US has its own judicial vacancy issues, with 51 positions waiting to be filled for US district courts – with 18 nominees pending. Those vacancies account for all but four empty seats on federal courts throughout the country. The US Court of Appeals is light three, and the Court of Federal Claims is short one.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Joe Biden is rushing to fill seats – and to shape the judiciary to the extent that Donald Trump did. The process has been slowed by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s illness, which hampered the work of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Republican efforts to slow appointments.
Meanwhile, state-level court appointments, or a lack thereof, are slowing down proceedings throughout the country, contributing to a crisis in the justice system.A view of the US Supreme Court, in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Jan. 8, 2024.
Courting AI opportunities (and hallucinations)
The AI boom, he said, brings both opportunities and concerns, noting that legal research may soon be “unimaginable” without the assistance of AI. “AI obviously has great potential to dramatically increase access to key information for lawyers and non-lawyers alike,” he wrote.
But he also cautioned “humility,” noting how “one of AI’s prominent applications made headlines this year for a shortcoming known as ‘hallucination,’ which caused the lawyers using the application to submit briefs with citations to nonexistent cases. (Always a bad idea.)” Indeed, AI chatbots tend to make stuff up — or hallucinate, which has been a repeated problem since the debut of ChatGPT.
So far, US federal courts have taken a decentralized approach, with 14 of 196 publishing their own gruidance on how AI tools can and cannot be used in litigation.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the United Kingdom recently took the first step toward allowing AI as an assistive tool in legal opinion writing. “Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI,” high-ranking judge Geoffrey Vos wrote. “But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce.”
So British courts will begin allowing AI to be used in legal writing, but not research — because of the aforementioned tendency to hallucinate.
Will AI judges take over? Roberts made an eloquent case against this and an impassioned defense of the humanity central to being an effective judge.
“Machines cannot fully replace key actors in court,” he wrote. “Judges, for example, measure the sincerity of a defendant’s allocution at sentencing. Nuance matters: Much can turn on a shaking hand, a quivering voice, a change of inflection, a bead of sweat, a moment’s hesitation, a fleeting break in eye contact. And most people still trust humans more than machines to perceive and draw the right inferences from these clues.”
Who is Attorney General William Barr?
President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over materials special counsel Robert Mueller used to assemble his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Attorney General William Barr, who faces growing backlash from House Democrats after refusing a subpoena that called for the release of those very materials, has long been an advocate of broad executive power. Barr's past may offer some insights into the present situation.