Enhancing Public Understanding of Court Opinions with Automated Summarizers

Judges are important policymakers but are less accountable to the public than legislators. One way judges strengthen the legitimacy of their policy choices given low accountability is by providing written justifications based on shared principles, which are then published as judicial opinions. John Rawls argued that "[The U.S. Supreme Court's] role is not merely defensive but to give due and continuing effect to public reason by serving as its institutional exemplar." Presumably, this legitimizing function is best served when the general population can understand the written justifications. In practice, however, judicial opinions tend to be extremely long and written in complicated technical language that is inaccessible except to trained lawyers.