Why Textualists Would Embrace an Infallible AI Adjudicator

Michael Showalter*

In a recent thought-provoking article built on what he calls a “sci-fi hypothetical,” Jack Kieffaber imagines a Judge.AI machine that resolves all disputes correctly and is installed as the judicial branch in a new country with a new constitution.¹ He contends that textualists should—but will not—embrace Judge.AI.² The Judge.AI judiciary represents a textualist utopia, Kieffaber argues, because Judge.AI is maximally predictable, and Kieffaber believes that predictability is textualism’s ultimate objective.³ But he predicts that textualists would resist Judge.AI, which in his view demonstrates that they are not really textualists. No one is actually textualist, he asserts, when push comes to shove.⁴

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© 2026 Michael Showalter. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Essay in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review Reflection, and includes this provision in the copyright notice.

*J.D. 2016, Yale Law School. The views expressed in this Essay are those of the author alone writing in his personal capacity.

1 Jack Kieffaber, Predictability, AI, and Judicial Futurism: Why Robots Will Run the Law and Textualists Will Like It, 48 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 895, 899 (2026).

2 Id. at 895.

3 Id. at 896.

4 Id. at 900.