Legal AI faces challenges in interpreting judicial rulings

Artificial intelligence tools are increasingly capable of locating laws, sentences, and legal documents in seconds using natural language queries. However, experts warn that finding a relevant document does not equate to understanding the actual judicial decision.

Lawyer Carlos Peña highlights the risk that AI may struggle to differentiate between the internal structure of a ruling. Specifically, these tools may fail to distinguish between the ‘ratio decidendi’—the essential legal basis for a decision—and the ‘obiter dictum’, which includes observations that are not determinative of the final ruling. This limitation could lead AI to incorrectly present certain considerations as established jurisprudence, potentially presenting criteria that actually contradict the court's final decision.