14/03/2024
On 11 March 2024, the Cour de cassation hosted a World Bank delegation for a work meeting on the use of new technologies and the Open Data project.
Mr Min Suk Kim, a Korean prosecutor seconded to the World Bank, and Mr Keongmin Yoon, a counsel at the World Bank, were received by President Sandrine Zientara, Director of the Documentation, Research and Reporting Department, and Mr Matthieu Allain, judge in the department and Head of the Digital Law and Data Protection Office.
This visit is part of the ongoing cooperation between the Court of cassation and the World Bank, a memorandum of understanding having been signed by the First President, Christophe Soulard, and Christopher Stephens, Senior Vice-President and General Counsel of the World Bank Group, on 3 November 2023.
During the meeting on 11 March, President Zientara presented the Open Data project for court decisions being piloted by the Cour de Cassation, as well as the various artificial intelligence initiatives developed by and for the Court of Cassation. Mr Kim and Mr Yong were able to learn about the significant resources mobilised by the Court (recruitment of data scientists, devops and other technical experts) to put in place tools making it possible, among other things, to pseudonymise decisions that have been made public and accessible, to direct appeals to the relevant chamber and, lastly, to identify possible divergences in case law, this last use still being at the experimental stage.
Mr Allain was able to explain to the members of the World Bank the technical aspects of this pseudonymisation for the protection of privacy, such as the elements that make it possible to identify a party to the dispute, or the judicial recourse available to oppose the concealment of this information.
President Zientara and Mr Allain answered questions from Mr Kim and Mr Yoon on the gradual online publication of all decisions handed down by the courts, providing statistical information, the method of transmission of decisions by the lower courts and the importance of establishing a hierarchy of decisions published online. President Zientara recalled the use made of this data by French legaltech companies, such as legal publishers, explaining that the consideration of economic development complemented the objectives of accessibility, intelligibility and transparency of French justice, which guide the Open Data project.
Mr Kim and Mr Yong expressed their great interest in the French model, considered to be one of the pioneers in putting decisions online and in the adoption of new technologies by the judicial institution. They were able to ask a number of methodological and organisational questions that will provide food for thought in the context of the project developed by the World Bank's Legal Department for the Republic of Korea entitled "Access to Justice and Technology: Using ICT to Close the Justice Gap". The delegation is also taking a close interest in the French experience of digitising the justice system and the prospects it opens up in terms of access to the law and its intelligibility, as well as gains in efficiency.
The study visit ended with a shared enthusiasm for further dialogue in the future on digitisation work and its impact on the justice system. These particularly fruitful exchanges illustrate the recent cooperation between the Cour de cassation and the World Bank. The meeting on 11 March 2024 also testifies to the Cour de cassation's willingness to support foreign judicial institutions in their modernisation and reform projects to promote access to justice and, more generally, the rule of law.
International