The Judicial Conference of the United States is the body that sets policy for the federal courts. It met this month, and the Administrative Office published an account of three things it heard about. The one people will want to read is the artificial intelligence section, and it is four paragraphs long.
What the judiciary has actually said about AI
The structural part first:
In 2025, Conrad appointed an advisory task force to organize and coordinate the Judiciary's efforts to address the significant questions raised by the emergence of AI and its impact on the federal courts. He said the task force has identified more than 60 distinct issues, prioritized them for review, and formed seven subject-matter subgroups to guide further study.
Then the substance, in full:
Conrad noted that he has issued interim guidance to the courts, developed by the Task Force, regarding use of AI. The Judiciary will roll out additional guidance as issues are resolved. In particular, courts have been cautioned not to delegate core judicial functions to AI, including decision-making or case adjudication. And all Judiciary users have been reminded that they are accountable for all work performed with the assistance of AI.
Read the verbs. Courts were cautioned. Users were reminded. Nothing in the item is a rule, an order, a standard or a requirement, and nothing states what happens if the caution is not heeded.
What the item does not contain
Four things a reader would reasonably expect, checked against the text of the item itself:
- No date. No issuance date for the interim guidance, no target for the additional guidance "as issues are resolved," no reporting deadline for the task force, and no next milestone.
- No enforcement. No sanction, no certification, no disclosure requirement, no audit, no compliance reporting.
- Nothing about litigants. The item does not mention filings, briefs, fabricated citations, or sanctions against lawyers — the AI problem the courts have actually been dealing with in public. It is entirely about the judiciary's own use.
- No list. The "more than 60 distinct issues" are not enumerated, and the seven subgroups are not named.
The interim guidance itself is not published on the judiciary's own site. What exists in public is this description of it.
Case management: a hard date, and no money
The CM/ECF replacement is the other half of the news, and here the item is specific about time and silent about cost.
The Judiciary has fast-tracked a fundamental redesign of its Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system, which has become outdated and vulnerable to security breaches.
The schedule, quoted:
He said the first component is on track to be released before the end of 2026. "By year end 2027, we will move all new district court cases into CMM. The appellate and bankruptcy courts will follow," Conrad said.
"Will follow" carries no date. And the item contains no dollar figure of any kind — not a budget, not an appropriation, not a cost estimate, not a projected saving. There is no count of affected courts or cases either.
The item also does not mention PACER, and does not mention fees. Neither word appears. Anything about what the replacement means for the cost of public access to court records is not in this document.
Courthouses: a request, a bill, and no outcome
The third initiative is the judiciary's bid to manage its own buildings instead of the General Services Administration doing it.
The Judiciary requested the authority, known as Real Property Authority (RPA), in late February. Courthouse properties currently are managed by the General Services Administration.
Where it stands:
On July 30, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to authorize a pilot project involving select court properties in a maximum of 10 judicial districts, as a first step toward a larger transfer of property authority.
Introduced, not passed. The item names no bill number and does not name the senators. The argument for it appears in the item without an attribution tag, unlike every other quotation in the piece:
"The proposed legislation would give us the opportunity to demonstrate operational capability while providing Congress with necessary oversight and evaluation opportunities before considering a broader expansion of authority."
Preparation is under way regardless: the Administrative Office "has hired key staff to help guide planning and has developed criteria for selecting up to 10 districts for the pilot, if the RPA bill is approved by Congress."
No cost figure, no rent figure, and no GSA response appears anywhere in the item.
The rest of the session
Two other actions are recorded. The Conference authorised an additional magistrate judge position in the District of Columbia, where magistrate judges rank "first nationally in total duties per magistrate judge and first in felony preliminary duties" and the court has "just four authorized full-time magistrate judge positions to support 15 district judgeships." And it approved an update to the judiciary's long-range IT plan adding "a goal to enhance the security of Judiciary IT systems by ensuring they are covered by the continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) program."
Why the wording matters
A caution is not a rule, and the difference is not pedantry. A rule can be cited, enforced, appealed, and pointed to by a litigant who thinks a court crossed it. Guidance that has not been published cannot be cited by anyone outside the judiciary at all.
The judiciary is the branch that decides what other people's AI outputs are worth in court. The account of what it has decided about its own is two verbs and no date.