Data Science for Justice: Evidence from a Randomized Judicial Reform in the Kenyan Judiciary

Can data science be used to improve the functioning of courts, and unlock the positive effects of institutions on economic development? Join SITE Brown Bag Seminar with Daniel Chen, Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics, on 29 March 2022.

Data Science for Justice

In a nationwide randomized experiment in Kenyan courts, authors develop and implement an algorithm that uses data regularly captured by administrative systems, identifies for each court their main sources of delay, and provides court-specific actionable recommendations on how to increase performance. Authors find that this intervention reduces delays, especially when the information is also shared with court user committees that include representatives from civil society, lawyers, and police. Authors find downstream economic effects of court speed, especially on contract-intensive industries.

Daniel Chen, Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics

Daniel Li Chen is the Lead Principal Investigator, DE JURE (Data and Evidence for Justice Reform) at the World Bank, Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE). He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Collaborator at Harvard Medical School, advisor at NYU Courant Institute for Mathematics Center for Data Science.

He is the founder of oTree Open Source Research Foundation and Data Science Justice Collaboratory and co-founder of Justice Innovation Lab. Chen was previously Chair of Law and Economics at ETH and tenure-track assistant professor in Law (primary), Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University.

Daniel Li Chen received his BA and MS from Harvard University in Applied Mathematics and Economics; Economics PhD from MIT; and JD from Harvard Law School. He has attained prominence through the development of open source tools to study human behavior and through large-scale empirical studies — data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning — on the relationship between law, social norms and the enforcement of legal norms, and on judicial systems.

Register for the Seminar

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