Project information
Data-Driven Judicial Governance: Power and Perils of Digital Managerialism in Courts

As digital technologies become embedded in court operations, judicial activities are increasingly being transformed into structured, comprehensive data that can be turned into information and realised as a new form of value. While existing scholarship has begun to explore how this ‘datafication’ of courts affects the adjudication on individual cases, it has largely overlooked its implications for judicial governance—the tools used to govern the judiciary, the actors who wield them, and the values judicial governance seeks to promote. Using the Czech Republic as a case study, this project addresses this gap by analysing how the datafication of judicial practices is transforming judicial governance—and under what conditions it can strengthen, rather than undermine, its values, such as judicial independence, accountability and efficiency. The project advances the field by (i) shifting the focus from individuals to institutions, (ii) introducing a new framework for analysing the impact of datafication on judicial governance, and (iii) grounding its analysis in empirical evidence.