ABSTRACT
Legal Decision Support Systems in Cuba as yet show few results, but now a resurgence of this field is possible. This new opportunity is due to the worldwide boom in AI & Law research. In addition to the current efforts towards the digital transformation of society. This paper aims to review some antecedents, and discuss some proposals for the evolution of this domain in the country. We first identify the strengths and constraints of some previous contributions and outline the current state of this topic in Cuba. Then, we propose some ideas for future projects, considering the main international approaches and state of the art in Artificial Intelligence, Soft Computing, Big data, and Open Data. We argue the importance of creating different forms of legal knowledge representation, the development of specific algorithms based on the most appropriate techniques for each task, updating of jurists’ and computer specialists’ curricula, and the legislative process improvement. Besides, we advocate the feasibility of creating recommendations in natural language, and we exemplify their types and uses. Finally, the paper calls attention to the protection of personal data and the importance of jurists to participate in the development of systems and to understand how they operate.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank reviewers and editors for their valuable suggestions and corrections. We would also like to thank Professor Antonio Martino for his comments on the first version of this paper and Professor Ivonne Collada for her valuable contribution in revising the language when writing the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For a review of the topic's evolution, see Amoroso (Citation2019).
2 In Spanish: Sociedad Cubana de Derecho e Informática (SCDeI).
3 In Spanish: Centro de Gobierno Electrónico (CEGEL).
4 In Spanish: Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas (UCI).
5 For a survey of the use of Open data in public administration in Latin America, see Ramírez-Alujas (Citation2020).
6 World Wide Web Consortium: international community that develops open standards for the long-term growth of the Web. Its resources are available at: https://www.w3.org/
7 For a detailed review on Big data see Chen, Mao, and Liu (Citation2014).
8 Directorate of Legal and Administrative Information. It carries out legal diffusion, administrative information, and public debate. Available at: https://www.dila.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/
9 Service of the National Congress Library. It contains 350,000 regulations that make up the national legal system, ratified international agreements, and related information. Available at: https://www.bcn.cl/leychile/
10 It contains the general national laws in force or not, and the reference to supra-state and intergovernmental norms. Available at: http://www.saij.gob.ar/digesto-juridico-argentino
11 Course taught at the Law School of the University of Havana during the 1990s.
12 Course taught annually since 2010 to students of Engineering in Computer Science assigned to the CEGEL and at the International Graduate School of the UCI.