‘Digital Future of Justice’: Insights from the hackathon

On 18-19 November 2023, the Council of Europe held an international hackathon in Paris, France. The event revolved around the topics of digital transformation, human rights, and easier use of case law databases. Titled ‘Digital Future of Justice’, the hackathon focused in particular on developing tools for automated indexing of judicial decisions with human rights categories.

The event brought together 29 participants, students and researchers from Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Romania, who formed six national teams. They were supported by experts in technology and law, invited as mentors. Diverse backgrounds of the participants, ranging from legal tech, software development and machine learning to data science, user experience design and legal expertise, allowed for inspiring brainstorming sessions and a comprehensive approach to developing solutions.

On the agenda, there was also a presentation of the data.europa.eu platform. Apart from access to open data, participants had the opportunity to gain more information about the data.europa academy, which offers courses tailored for developers, researchers and lawyers.

Following a demonstration of the six projects developed during the hackathon, the jury declared Norway as the winner of the competition. The team focused on the database of the European Court of Human Rights (HUDOC) and developed a tool to visualise relevant and advanced cases related to specific keywords. Romania and Poland came 2nd and 3rd respectively; read more about the solutions proposed by these teams on the website of the hackathon.

The event was organised in the scope of the Council of Europe’s project ‘Foster Transparency of Judicial Decisions and Enhancing the National Implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights’ (TJENI).

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