Le travail des juges et les algorithmes de traitement de la jurisprudence. Premières analyses d’une expérimentation de « justice prédictive» en France

This article proposes an analysis of one of the first experiments using a software able to process judicial databases (as part of the open data movement in the French judicial administration) by some judges of a French court (cour d’appel). Based on recent developments and on fieldwork (interviews), it shows how the activity of judges is already supported by devices for framing decisions on the basis of prior judicial history, such as frames of reference, nomenclatures, etc., which “equip” the production of the decisions. It also discusses how the introduction of the software both tests and reconfigures pre-existing tensions regarding the radical independence of the judge (the contested site of tension between autonomy and control), and makes particularly salient the question of the distribution of agency between judges and the technological devices employed when producing judgments.