The growing use of artificial intelligence in China’s smart-court reform has improved judicial efficiency, case management, and consistency, but it has also raised a more fundamental question: whether AI-assisted adjudication can remain compatible with the normative foundations of judicial authority. Focusing on the Chinese context, this article examines the interaction between judicial artificial intelligence and core judicial principles, particularly judicial independence, accountability, transparency, procedural justice, neutrality, and substantive fairness. Methodologically, the study adopts normative legal analysis and qualitative interpretive inquiry based on policy documents, judicial materials, and comparative scholarship on algorithmic governance. It argues that judicial AI tools such as case similarity recommendation, judgment prediction, and deviation alerts are not merely neutral instruments of modernization. Their expanding use may reshape the boundary of judicial power, blur responsibility, weaken procedural guarantees, and reproduce bias in ways that affect adjudicative legitimacy. The article therefore contends that judicial AI should be assessed not only by efficiency gains, but also by whether it preserves the core judicial principles on which public trust depends. It further proposes stronger human control, clearer accountability structures, and more effective regulation of algorithmic opacity and bias.

Wanlu Lei, Li Li. Judicial Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge to Core Judicial Principles in the Chinese Context. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2026), Vol. 9, Issue 5: 1-7. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2026.090501.

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