In the face of ever-changing realities of social and political contexts of the modern world, it is necessary to consider the transformation of the role of the judiciary system in the delivery of justice. Taking into consideration the fact that an increasing level of technology sophistication allows solving numerous problems facing our society, it could be argued that technological progress will inevitably lead to the application of IT in the court. However, it might pose new expectations about the level of transparency of the justice system thereby creating new challenges. Moreover, the factors such as changing demographics, distribution of scarce court recourses, new requirements for accountability, and access to information among others could put a significant strain on the future courts.
The cost of providing justice creates budgetary pressures; therefore, if the demand for the use of justice system continues to grow, it could be argued that politics of payment will lead to substantial problems for courts of the future. Moreover, two of three branches of government are intertwined to a great degree. It means that in the future, the tensions between the departments funding justice and those that consume substantial amounts of it will grow. In order to reduce the deleterious effects of the intertwining of those arms of government, it is necessary to clarify the role of courts. To this end, it is necessary to encourage further separation of the criminal and civil justice systems in the country. It will help to solve the funding problems of the former to some degree; however, the latter might still be affected by the insufficient funding. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new funding models.
The necessity to decrease spending will inevitably lead to problems affecting the whole court system. IT solutions could be employed in an attempt to solve this problem thereby creating new issues for courts of the future. New financial reality will lead to the development of virtual courts that could optimize costs of providing justice by reducing a number of brick-and-mortar courtrooms. Even though this solution could decrease logistics costs for all involved parties, it will lead to the decrease of real human participation in the judiciary process which, in turn, might result in the increased demand for the use of justice system. If hearing management does not rely on the physical presence of staff, police, judges, witness, and other parties in courts and becomes completely virtualized the judiciary process will be more streamlined.
However, the use of such technology might lead to the complete transformation of the way cases are being allowed in the courts now. It could result in more codified and bureaucratized system. Moreover, if the judiciary process moves into cyberspace, it will lead to the creation of paperless courts. Even though it will substantially reduce costs of applying the law, numerous cybersecurity issues and challenges will inevitably emerge. Therefore, courts of the future will have to develop effective solutions for managing risks associated with information systems. To this end, they will have to create IT departments that could assist in protecting both federal and non-federal systems. They will concentrate on minimizing threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts of attacks on critical infrastructure. Unfortunately, it will drive the court spending even further. At the moment there is no effective solution for defending possible cyber-attacks without increasing annual budgets of government agencies.