Professor Simon Chesterman delivers David Marshall Professorial Lecture

The David Marshall Professorial Lecture was delivered by Professor Simon Chesterman at the NUS Bukit Timah Campus on November 8, 2022, and it was titled “All Rise for the Honourable Robot Judge? Using Artificial Intelligence to Regulate AI”. Guests included Dr Jonathan Marshall (son of Mr David Marshall), Honourable Justice Pang Khang Chau and Honourable Justice Vinodh Coomaraswamy, with Honourable Justice Aedit Abdullah as chairperson.

NUS established the David Marshall Professorship in 1993, in honour of Mr David Marshall, a pre-eminent criminal lawyer who became Singapore’s first Chief Minister. He was also a diplomat who served as Ambassador to France, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland. The Professorship enables NUS Law to engage eminent professors to co-operate with the NUS community in research and education, bringing unique perspectives and insights to legal education in Singapore in its ever-growing regional and international role. The David Marshall Professorship is supported by generous gifts from Far East Organization, Lee Foundation, Lien Foundation, Reuben Meyer Trust Fund, as well as other companies and individuals.

There is a rich literature on the challenges that AI poses to the legal order. But to what extent might such systems also offer part of the solution? The lecture kicked off with an example of AI use in the courtroom – referencing a videoed pre-trial meeting in Hangzhou’s Internet Court released in 2019 that had an avatar as judge. Against the Chinese context where technology plays a role at the apex of the justice system, Professor Chesterman discussed AI as a double-edged sword, as its use implies a view of law that is instrumental, with parties to proceedings treated as means rather than ends. That, in turn, raises fundamental questions about the nature of law and authority: at base, whether law is reducible to code that can optimize the human condition, or if it must remain a site of contestation, of politics, and inextricably linked to institutions that are themselves accountable to a public. For many of the questions, the rational answer will be sufficient; but for others, what the answer is may be less important than how and why it was reached, and whom an affected population can hold to account for its consequences.

About the Speaker

Simon Chesterman is the David Marshall Professor and Vice-Provost of Educational Innovation at National University of Singapore, where he also serves as the Dean of NUS College and the Faculty of Law. He is Senior Director of AI Governance at AI Singapore, Editor of the Asian Journal of International Law, and Co-President of the Law Schools Global League. From 2006-2011, he was Global Professor and Director of the New York University School of Law Singapore Programme.

Professor Chesterman is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law (CUP, 2021); Law and Practice of the United Nations (with Ian Johnstone and David M. Malone, OUP, 2016); From Community to Compliance? The Evolution of Monitoring Obligations in ASEAN (CUP, 2015); One Nation Under Surveillance (OUP, 2011); You, the People (OUP, 2004); and Just War or Just Peace? (OUP, 2001).

He is a recognised authority on international law, whose work has opened up new areas of research on conceptions of public authority — including the rules and institutions of global governance, state-building and post-conflict reconstruction, the changing role of intelligence agencies, and the emerging role of artificial intelligence and big data. He also writes on legal education and higher education more generally, and is the author of four young adult fiction novels including the Raising Arcadia trilogy.