Process Pluralism, AI and Legitimacy: A Scoping Review

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This Article examines how artificial intelligence (AI) shapes perceptions of trust and legitimacy across justice systems and dispute resolution processes. Using a scoping review methodology, we synthesize the growing scholarship on automated decisionmaking (ADM) and other uses of AI in both formal and informal legal contexts. Our review covers thirty-eight studies and identifies three central findings. First, perceptions of AI are shaped by the interaction of task allocation, decisionmaking domain, technical design, and user characteristics. Second, fairness consistently emerges as the dominant evaluative lens, reflecting the influence of procedural justice theory. Yet this emphasis also reveals a gap: pragmatic factors such as access and efficiency receive far less attention. Third, although ADM scholarship is expansive, only a small subset engages with courts and dispute resolution, and that work has tended to focus narrowly on judicial decisionmaking. This emphasis amplifies court-specific concerns while overlooking how attitudes toward AI vary across domains, procedural types, third-party roles, and institutional contexts. Furthermore, such a narrow focus obscures the reality that most disputes today are resolved through plural pathways outside formal adjudication. The article concludes by urging a broader research agenda that situates AI within this diverse dispute resolution landscape and reexamines procedural justice theories in light of the distinctive challenges and opportunities raised by AI-driven processes.