The Master of the Rolls, the second-most senior judge in England and Wales, has called for an urgent public debate on artificial intelligence in judicial decision-making, declaring the conversation "must start now."

The remark, reported by Law Gazette, places AI-assisted reasoning near the top of the senior English judiciary's agenda. The Master of the Rolls heads the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal and exercises statutory oversight over judicial resources in England and Wales. He ranks second in the English judicial hierarchy after the Lord Chief Justice.

What is the Master of the Rolls asking for?

The judge's intervention frames AI-assisted judicial reasoning as a question for open deliberation, not unilateral rule-making. He invites structured public engagement before courts deploy AI tools at scale, rather than react after deployment.

Practitioners and regulators have identified five core questions any such debate will need to resolve:

• Disclosure obligations where AI drafts submissions, witness statements, or skeleton arguments
• Treatment of probabilistic or opaque algorithmic outputs offered in evidence
• Verification standards for case citations and statutory references produced by generative tools
• Training and competency requirements for judicial officeholders using AI
• Ethical and procedural limits on machine-assisted sentencing or risk scoring

What groundwork already exists?

The Bar Council and the Law Society have issued interim guidance to members on the use of large language models and other generative tools. The Judicial College has run training programmes for judges on digital evidence and machine-assisted disclosure.

None of those instruments binds the court. They set baseline expectations within their respective professions but leave questions of judicial reliance on AI tools unanswered.

How any rule would emerge

Concrete rules on AI in the courtroom would most likely travel through instruments the Master of the Rolls can shape directly: practice directions issued under the Lord Chief Justice's authority, amendments to the Civil Procedure Rules through the Rule Committee, or formal guidance from the Judicial Office. Primary legislation would require the Lord Chancellor's involvement and parliamentary time.

Until a specific instrument emerges, the existing framework applies. The common-law duty to give reasons for judicial decisions, the expert-evidence rules under Part 35 of the Civil Procedure Rules, and the overriding objective in CPR Part 1 of dealing with cases justly and at proportionate cost govern AI-assisted material as they do any other input.

Practical implications for practitioners

For solicitors and barristers, the immediate task is conservative case management:

• Treat AI-generated text as a draft requiring independent verification
• Check each cited authority against an authoritative database such as BAILII, Westlaw, or Lexis+
• Retain prompts, model identifiers, and outputs so the provenance of any AI-assisted document can be reconstructed on demand
• Anticipate case management directions that may require parties to disclose AI assistance
• Treat vendor-supplied risk scores as expert evidence, with methodology disclosure under CPR Part 35

Where the senior bench stands

The Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chancellor, and the Judicial College have each begun work on judicial AI competency. The Master of the Rolls' intervention adds the weight of the senior appellate bench to the argument that policy should follow deliberation, not precede it.

The Law Gazette item reviewed here provides the headline and a brief report; any underlying speech, written contribution, or formal consultation document behind the remark is not identified in the public record currently available.

The senior judge's choice of words — that debate "must start now" — signals that the English judiciary will not wait for primary legislation before forming a settled view on AI in the courtroom.