ABSTRACT

1 FROM THE GUEST EDITOR: GODA STRIKAITĖ-LATUŠINSKAJA

Dear readers,

We stand at a moment when technological innovation is reshaping the structure and operation of legal systems with unprecedented speed. Artificial intelligence, now recognised as a key enabling technology¹, has moved from the periphery of innovation debates to the centre of legal and policy agenda. Artificial intelligence has increasingly become embedded in public administration and justice systems, reflecting broader EU efforts to digitalise public services,² streamline administrative and judicial processes,³ and promote the responsible use of emerging technologies across legal institutions.⁴ The question is no longer whether AI will transform law, but how deeply and under what safeguards it will influence rights, duties, and institutional legitimacy across jurisdictions.

The adoption of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act,⁵ the world’s first binding legal framework for AI, marks a milestone in steering these developments. Yet many of its obligations will apply only gradually. This transitional landscape reinforces the growing reliance on soft-law instruments, such as ethical guidelines, recommendations, and institutional policies that increasingly guide technological practice while binding rules continue to evolve.⁶ In modern technology governance, such soft-law sources have

become an essential complement to legislation, shaping expectations and safeguards well before formal obligations take effect.⁷

This Special Issue of Access to Justice in Eastern Europe brings together research from diverse jurisdictions united by a shared concern: reconciling technological innovation with justice, accountability, and human dignity. The contributions collectively illuminate how different legal systems are responding to the opportunities and risks posed by AI in public governance, adjudication, and private law.

The article “AI and Law: Procedural Safeguards and Regulatory Challenges in Kazakhstan” examines the emerging regulatory framework in Kazakhstan and reveals significant gaps in the governance of high-risk systems. Drawing on EU and OECD models, the authors propose a phased reform strategy: targeted legislative amendments in the short term, followed by a dedicated AI law to strengthen transparency, oversight, and accountability.

The article “Artificial Intelligence in Courts and Dispute Resolution: Challenges and Opportunities” turns to the sensitive domain of adjudication. Through doctrinal and comparative analysis, it distinguishes between assistive AI tools and fully autonomous decision-making, concluding that only the former can be reconciled with fair trial guarantees. The authors highlight the need for human oversight, transparency, and safeguards against bias to preserve judicial independence and public trust.

The article “Legal Challenges Related to Contractual Negotiations via AI Technologies” explores the civil-law implications of AI systems used in contractual negotiations within Arab jurisdictions. Identifying a regulatory vacuum in Egypt and the UAE, it contrasts these frameworks with emerging EU liability models and proposes clearer definitions, evidentiary rules, and supervisory mechanisms to address complex issues of fault and causation.

Together, these articles demonstrate how AI is testing and, in some cases, reshaping legal doctrine and institutional design. Their insights underscore the need for coherent, rightscentred regulatory approaches that can accommodate technological complexity while safeguarding accountability and public trust.

2 FROM MANAGING EDITOR: Yuliia Hartman

Dear readers,

Interdisciplinarity has become a defining trend in contemporary research. It marks a shift in traditional disciplines as they adapt to remain relevant and deliver a tangible impact on today’s complex societal challenges. By integrating knowledge across fields, interdisciplinary research enables scholars to revisit rigid or traditional concepts from new perspectives, often leading to groundbreaking insights and transformative developments.

Law, as one of the oldest pillars of the classical sciences, is often perceived as rigid, formalistic, and resistant to change. Its methods and language seem firmly standardised, and its application appears constrained within established doctrinal boundaries. This Special Issue aims to challenge that stereotype by demonstrating how legal scholarship increasingly intersects with other rapidly developing scientific domains.

Today’s realities offer numerous opportunities to combine legal studies with other disciplines. One of the most promising intersections is the relationship between law and artificial intelligence, a field that draws substantial academic interest from researchers in mathematics and information technologies. The symbiosis between law and AI offers a new paradigm for legal research, particularly in processing and analysing massive datasets accumulated over long periods.

The intersection of law and technology is no longer a theoretical pursuit but a practical necessity, accelerated by global crises. A pivotal turning point was the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced judiciaries worldwide to digitalise rapidly, effectively opening the door to broader technological innovations. This era proved that legal systems could adapt to digital environments, setting the stage for more advanced integration of AI.

Today, AI’s potential in legal research is most evident when addressing the challenge of systematising massive datasets shaped by extraordinary societal events. For instance, the ongoing war in Ukraine has generated a vast but fragmented body of case law regarding war-related damages. With over 120 million decisions in the national archive and no dedicated filters for such unique categories, traditional manual analysis reaches its limits. Similarly, in the realm of international human rights, AI tools are increasingly being tested to predict judicial outcomes or identify patterns in the European Court of Human Rights' extensive jurisprudence.

In these contexts, AI offers a transformative solution. While machine-learning algorithms require expert tuning by scientists, they can process data at a scale unimaginable for humans. However, this remains a collaborative effort: legal scholars must provide the essential normative criteria and contextual datasets to ensure AI training remains grounded in the rule of law.

A compelling example of AI’s potential in legal research is the challenge of systematising and correctly analysing court decisions.⁸ This challenge becomes especially urgent in areas of law shaped by extraordinary societal events, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine. With more than 120 million decisions in the archive, finding relevant cases, identifying patterns, and tracing the development of this category is exceedingly difficult. AI technologies can offer a solution.⁹ While AI cannot independently perform analytical work without prior training, machine-learning algorithms, developed and tuned by experts in exact sciences, can process data at a scale unimaginable for humans. Legal scholars, in turn, must provide the criteria, datasets, and contextual understanding necessary for AI training.¹⁰

The prospects of integrating AI into legal scholarship are substantial:

• more efficient processing of court decisions;

• improved search accuracy across massive datasets;

• the ability to extract unique cases from thousands of similar decisions;

• simplified and accelerated systematisation of judicial practice;

• timely identification of inconsistencies or gaps;

• opportunities to isolate stable judicial approaches and identify exceptional trends.

These advances can also stimulate the development of legislation grounded in real-world challenges. For example, a comprehensive analysis of case law on compensation for warrelated damage may inform future compensation mechanisms and help prevent “double recovery” in judicial and extrajudicial procedures.¹¹

The formation of this Special Issue is driven by the growing integration of AI tools into legal institutions and processes. Thanks to the contributions gathered here, this Special Issue brings together diverse and timely perspectives on the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence, technological development, and the law. The contributions reflect a wide geographical and thematic scope, from Eastern Europe and Vietnam to the Middle East and beyond.

The contributions gathered in this Special Issue reflect a broad and diverse spectrum of inquiry, united by a strong comparative dimension and an emphasis on European legal standards as a benchmark for global reform. The article from Vietnam sets this tone by offering a rigorous comparative study between the European Union and Vietnam, examining how criminal justice systems can integrate AI-driven innovations without compromising personal data protection or fundamental fair-trial rights. This theme of balancing technology with procedural integrity is further expanded in the analysis by UAEbased researchers, who investigate the growing impact of social media on criminal proceedings. By identifying legislative gaps in Jordan and proposing safeguards to protect the presumption of innocence and judicial impartiality, their work underscores the global need to adapt traditional legal principles to the digital sphere.

The European experience remains a central point of reference throughout the issue. The study from Lithuania provides a timely doctrinal analysis of the new EU Product Liability Directive, unpacking its updated framework and the critical shift toward stricter liability regimes for harm caused by AI systems. Complementing this, the contribution from Ukrainian scholars addresses the pervasive challenge of algorithmic bias. By defining the limits of technological neutrality and proposing a pragmatic governance blueprint for the rights-compliant use of large language models (LLMs) in courts, with a specific focus on the Ukrainian context, the authors bridge the gap between European theoretical standards and practical judicial application. Together, these studies illustrate the rapidly expanding intersections between AI and law, highlighting how comparative insights can help navigate the systemic challenges of digital transformation. We invite our readers to explore these timely contributions and engage with the vital questions they raise.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to our guest editors, Dr. Goda Strikaitė- Latušinskaja and Dr. Costas Popotas, for their exceptional dedication, meticulous work, and professionalism. Their commitment, expertise in law and AI, and thoughtful contributions to the preparation and evaluation of the manuscripts have been invaluable.

Their support greatly assisted the AJEE’s editorial team throughout the development of this Special Issue, and it is no exaggeration to say that this publication would not have been possible without their efforts.

We hope that this Special Issue will contribute meaningfully to the ongoing global discussion on the expanding integration of AI into the legal sphere and the complex challenges arising from this transformation. We warmly encourage our readers to engage in post-publication dialogue and continue this increasingly important conversation.

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