Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley opened a probe into two federal district judges who had to retract opinions this summer amid allegations that the rulings were plagued with errors from using artificial intelligence.
Judge Henry T. Wingate in Mississippi and Judge Xavier Neals in New Jersey both said the errors didn’t affect their overall rulings, but declined to say much more about how they happened.
Mr. Grassley, the Senate’s senior lawmaker and chairman of the committee that oversees the courts, said they must answer more questions.
“No less than the attorneys who appear before them, judges must be held to the highest standards of integrity, candor, and factual accuracy. Indeed, Article III judges should be held to a higher standard, given the binding force of their rulings on the rights and obligations of litigants before them,” the Iowa Republican said.
He called on them to restore the original erroneous opinions to the public docket for transparency’s sake and prodded the two judges to say how the errors came about.
That includes saying whether they or their clerks used generative AI or entered information about the case into AI tools.
Judge Neals, a Biden appointee, issued an opinion in June that wrongly cited the outcomes of multiple precedents and included quotes from rulings that weren’t actually found in those cases. The judge also wrongly attributed statements to litigants in the case.
Andrew Lichtman, one of the lawyers in the case, filed a letter with the judge pointing out the errors and saying the case had already been cited as precedent in other actions.
Judge Wingate, a Reagan appointee, issued a restraining order in July against Mississippi’s law limiting the teaching of diversity, equity and inclusion principles in schools. His opinion cited litigants who weren’t actually parties to the case and fabricated text of state law.
The two judges had rebuffed demands to explain what happened. Judge Wingate had called his botches “clerical errors.”
Experts said the bungles had all the hallmarks of AI “hallucinations,” or fabrications. Those have become shockingly common in lawyers’ filings.
Mr. Grassley asked the judges to detail the steps they’ve taken to try to prevent repeats of the errors.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.