AI and legal balancing decisions: Interdisciplinary workshop
To what extent can and should artificial intelligence (AI) be used in balancing decisions within (private) law? An interdisciplinary workshop explored this question on September 11, 2026. The workshop was organised by the Dynamic Cluster on "Procedural Anthropocentrism," a framework in which members of the research group collaborate flexibly with external researchers. Scholars from the research group with backgrounds in law and computer science debated with external guests from the fields of law, computer science, and theology whether balancing decisions, such as the assessment of damages for pain and suffering, inherently require human decision-makers.
Legal foundations of balancing decisions in private law
The event began with a Keynote address by Dr. André Reinelt (Bucerius Law School, Hamburg). He addressed the methodological challenges of interdisciplinary research and specifically explored the extent to which indeterminate legal concepts, such as equity, allow for recourse to extra-legal insights.
Dr. Anna Kirchhefer-Lauber and Dr. Christian Rüsing (University of Münster) examined the topic from the perspectives of legal history and legal doctrine. The ensuing discussion focused, among other things, on the guidelines that case law has developed for concrete balancing decisions. This revealed that, in many areas, judicial practice has thus far been less concerned with "calculability" than with the nature of the legal reasoning. Consequently, fundamental questions took center stage: What characterizes a compelling judicial balancing decision? Is the primary focus the exercise of a "legal conscience" or "sense of justice," or rather the realization of justice in the individual case and the consideration of all specific circumstances? And to what extent should uniformity in the application of the law be achieved? The participants also examined the reasons why the judiciary has established certain parameters and remains somewhat reluctant toward greater standardization and calculability in balancing decisions.
In this context, a keynote presentation by Prof. Dr. Jan Dietrich (University of Bonn) proved highly inspiring. From a theological perspective, he demonstrated the diverse ways in which the concepts of equity and humanity can be understood. On this basis, the group developed initial sociological hypotheses, which are to be empirically tested in individual sub-projects of the research group. A central focus here will be the public acceptance of judicial balancing decisions.
Balancing Decisions by AI Systems
In the afternoon, Dr. Lucas Stampe, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Information Systems (University of Münster), presented the mechanics of language models coupled with content-based reasoning models. The presentation sparked an interdisciplinary debate regarding the extent to which the operation of these models can simulate, or even actively perform, balancing decisions. In this context, the group engaged in an in-depth joint reflection on the individual steps that comprise judicial balancing decisions and the degree to which they are amenable to being delegated to AI systems. The event concluded with a second brief presentation by Dr. André Reinelt (Bucerius Law School, Hamburg), this time focusing on legal theory, in which he engaged with Duncan Kennedy’s theory of judicial adjudication.
All participants highly valued the authentic and informal exchange, which successfully brought together diverse perspectives through concise presentations from various disciplines. The workshop organizers, Dr. Anna Kirchhefer-Lauber and Dr. Christian Rüsing, would like to thank all attendees for their enthusiastic participation and the valuable interdisciplinary dialogue.