Two U.S. federal courtrooms recently stumbled into an unusual storm.
Judges discovered that official court orders—signed, filed, and entered into the record—contained impossible facts, fake quotes, and even non-existent people.
No, it wasn’t a prank by some disgruntled clerk. It was generative AI gone wild.
In one instance, Judge Henry T. Wingate of the Southern District of Mississippi released an order that cited cases no one could find.
Turns out, an over-eager clerk had leaned on an AI tool to draft parts of the ruling, and nobody caught the hallucinations before it hit the docket.
The judge later admitted the error and quickly withdrew the order after attorneys raised the alarm, according to an account shared in a Washington Post investigation.
Another courtroom, hundreds of miles away in New Jersey, saw a similar fiasco. Judge Julien Xavier Neals’s chambers used a language model to help research precedent.
The result? Quotes and citations that didn’t exist, woven seamlessly into a real court ruling.
When the issue came to light, the judge owned up to it, admitting the use of generative AI and calling it a “hard-learned lesson” in the limits of trusting automated assistance.
A Bloomberg Law report noted that both judges have since revised their internal protocols.
When Senator Chuck Grassley caught wind of the mess, he didn’t mince words. He called the incidents “breathtaking,” warning that such missteps could erode public confidence in the judicial system.
In his view, it’s not just about bad optics—it’s about the sanctity of the rule of law.
His comments, echoed in Senate Judiciary Committee correspondence, urged the courts to lay down clear boundaries for AI use.
You have to wonder—how did this even happen? Courts aren’t exactly known for being early adopters of cutting-edge tech. But lately, the judicial world has been flirting with automation, using AI tools to speed up drafting, research, even administrative tasks.
The problem? These tools don’t know truth from fiction; they just predict what words look right. And when those predictions land in a court order, the results can be embarrassing—or worse.
Legal experts, such as those interviewed by Reuters on the broader trend, have warned that generative models “lack an understanding of factual accuracy.”
Both judges have now banned AI from use in drafting or research within their chambers. One even ordered clerks to print and manually verify every case citation before publication.
It’s a bit old-school, but honestly, maybe that’s the point. Courts aren’t tech startups; they’re supposed to move slow and check their work.
Still, you can’t help but think—this won’t be the last time we see AI sneaking into government workflows.
And I get it. Everyone’s racing to keep up. Generative AI can save hours of grunt work, and when it behaves, it’s dazzling.
But the Wingate and Neals episodes remind us that you can’t outsource judgment. A model can draft, but a human must decide.
That’s a principle as old as the gavel itself, and as one analyst put it in an NPR commentary on AI and accountability, “the minute we forget that distinction, we start replacing discernment with convenience.”
So maybe the real story here isn’t just about two faulty court orders.
It’s about a quiet but powerful truth: technology is only as wise as the people using it. And in the courtroom, wisdom—not efficiency—has to win.
