Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito jokes about letting Claude AI decide a major case

"Just out of curiosity," Alito asked during oral arguments on Monday, "do you think we should ask Claude to decide this case?" Erin Schaff/Getty Images 2026-04-01T17:17:47.244Z Share Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt.

Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. Anthropic's Claude AI came up during oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday.

Justice Samuel Alito asked whether the court should use Claude to decide the case before them. The lawyer arguing that case is a proponent of using AI in the legal field. AI-generated summary Summaries are generated by an AI model trained on Business Insider's articles. AI may make mistakes or provide inaccurate/incomplete information. We're unable to load that answer right now. Please try again. What is Claude AI's role in legal tech? Who is Adam Unikowsky? How does the Supreme Court view AI use? How might AI influence court decisions? What are pros and cons of AI in law?

Even Supreme Court justices are talking about Claude. Loading audio narration...

Associate Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court's conservative members, brought up the Anthropic-owned large language model in a humorous way during oral arguments at the court on Monday."Well, just out of curiosity, do you think we should ask Claude to decide this case?" Alito asked, spurring laughter. The petitioner's counsel, Adam Unikowsky, replied that he would instead "adhere to the wise judgment of" the court. A screenshot of the transcript of the oral argument for Jules v.

Andre Balazs Properties. Supreme Court of the United States Claude had little to do with the underlying case, Jules v.

Andre Balazs Properties, which is related to the ability of federal courts to confirm arbitration awards. So why did Alito bring it up?Unikowsky, a lawyer at Jenner & Block who's argued more than a dozen cases before the Supreme Court, happens to be an AI enthusiast who's experimented with using the technology in legal practice. He has written several newsletter posts about experimenting with AI in the law, and has argued as far back as June 2024 that AI "can accurately decide cases and write judicial opinions."In one instance, Unikowsky gave Claude the briefs for several Supreme Court cases, finding that the large language model "consistently decides cases correctly" and that when it differs from how the Supreme Court actually decided the case, its "disposition is invariably reasonable." Last year, Unikowsky even experimented with allowing Claude to present an oral argument before a court, concluding that courts "should permit robot lawyers at oral arguments and shouldn't discourage this practice."