As a part of the Digital China strategy, the construction of digital courts takes “fairness and efficiency” as its core proposition. It upholds the concepts of the digital rule of law, including digital empowerment, digital justice, and the people-oriented rule of law, thereby making a transformative reform in the judicial system. The construction of digital courts is an organic combination of the idea of justice for the people and the spirit of scientific and technological innovation in the implementation of Digital China strategy under the guidance of Xi Jinping thought on the rule of law. Different from the informatization of traditional court and the construction of smart courts, the construction of digital courts serves as a pathway to achieving high-quality development and modernization of people’s courts. Relying on big data to establish digital scenario models covering all areas of trial and enforcement, it can realize the reconstruction of judicial ideas, the litigation process, and the court organizational structure by facilitating the continuous quality assessment and risk warning internally and enhancing litigation services and engaging in social governance externally. The construction of digital courts is mainly carried out in five aspects, i.e., digital case handling, digital supervision, digital convenience for the people, digital governance, and digital administration, and should follow the development path of “data deconstruction—model construction—embedded operation”, forming a scenario-driven application system from the bottom up. Regardless of the stage of digital court construction, three principles must be followed, that is, adhering to the authority of the judge, strengthening the security of judicial data, and ensuring the reliability of model algorithms. |