In Search of Smartness: The EU e-Justice Challenge

At the EU level, an increasing number of resources are being invested in an attempt to provide better public services through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). While new tools are being designed and implemented, a shift from ‘traditional’ technologies that must be used to provide services to more interactive ‘smart’ technologies is beginning to take place. At the same time, an adequate understanding of the implications of this shift is still missing. This paper focuses on the EU e-Justice experience with the ‘API-for-Justice’ project, which investigates the challenges of opening up the European e-Justice Digital Service Infrastructure to external service providers by means of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In particular, the exploration of potential services that can be provided by third parties through APIs for Justice shows the potential for a radical redesign of the justice service provision, where, for example, justice services are not requested by the party but are proposed or initiated by smart components of the infrastructure on the basis of inputs from the environment. In this perspective, smart technology research and, in particular, Brenner (2007)’s discussion on law and smart technology help to uncover the still unclear dynamics of change that characterize one of the key pillars of modern society: justice.