Senate Judiciary inquiry into judges' AI use

What happened

By late summer 2025, 2 federal district judges had withdrawn rulings containing errors of the kind generative AI produces. Judge Julien Xavier Neals of the District of New Jersey withdrew an opinion in the CorMedix securities case. Judge Henry T. Wingate of the Southern District of Mississippi replaced a temporary restraining order in a challenge to the state's DEI law. Neither judge had explained publicly how the errors arose.

On October 6, 2025, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote to both judges. He asked whether they, their law clerks or court staff had used generative AI in preparing the decisions, and whether any non-public case information had been entered into an AI tool. He also asked them to restore the original orders to the docket. His release stated: "No less than the attorneys who appear before them, judges must be held to the highest standards of integrity, candor, and factual accuracy."

What the judges and the judiciary said

Judge Neals responded on October 20, 2025, stating that a law school intern had used ChatGPT without authorization. Judge Wingate responded on October 21, 2025, stating that a law clerk had used Perplexity to synthesize docket information. Both described the docketed rulings as early drafts that had skipped the chambers' normal review, and both described new review procedures.

Robert J. Conrad Jr., Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, also wrote on October 21, 2025. He described an AI Task Force of judges, court executives, and technology and chambers staff, and interim guidance distributed to the courts on July 31, 2025. According to his letter, the guidance cautions against delegating core judicial functions to AI, including decision-making, and advises users to "review and independently verify all AI-generated content or output." It states that users are "accountable for all work performed with the assistance of AI" and asks judges to consider whether AI use should be disclosed. The letter described the guidance as interim, to be followed by more permanent policy.

Where it stands

On October 23, 2025, Senator Grassley released the responses. He stated that "the judicial branch needs to develop more decisive, meaningful and permanent AI policies and guidelines." No discipline of either judge has been reported. In March 2026, bills titled the Research and Oversight of AI in Courts Act of 2026 were introduced in both chambers, addressing AI speech-to-text technology in the federal courts. A March 2026 survey report published by the New York City Bar Association found that more than 60% of responding federal judges had used at least one AI tool. No permanent judiciary-wide policy on judges' AI use in the sources opened as of September 2026.

The obligation it engaged

The interim guidance, as the AO letter describes it, tracks 3 clauses of the Expert Record Standard. It addresses non-delegation of decisions (Clause 2), independent verification of output (Clause 3) and consideration of disclosure (Clause 8). The chairman's question about non-public case information goes to Clause 6, custody and confidentiality: what may be submitted to a system at all.

The inquiry also shows what happens when there is no contemporaneous record (Clause 7). Each judge had to reconstruct, months later and under congressional inquiry, who used which system and for what. An expert who keeps a log as the work proceeds can answer the same questions from a document.

Sources

• Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (via Sen. Grassley) · October 21, 2025
  AO to Grassley re judiciary use of AI
• U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary · October 23, 2025
  Grassley Releases Judges' Responses Owning Up to AI Use, Calls for Continued Oversight and Regulation
• Office of Sen. Chuck Grassley · October 6, 2025
  Grassley Scrutinizes Federal Judges' Apparent AI Use in Drafting Error-Ridden Rulings
• New York City Bar Association · March 30, 2026
  Artificial Intelligence in Federal Courts: A Random-Sample Survey of Judges

What could not be confirmed

The interim guidance itself was not published in full in the sources opened; its content is taken from the AO letter. The ABA Washington Letter attributes the March 2026 judicial survey to Northwestern University, while the New York City Bar Association page presents it as its task force's report; the entry does not attribute authorship beyond the Bar's publication. Whether a permanent policy was adopted after these sources is not confirmed.