The greatest tension in modern law is the gap between the “Spirit of the Law” and the “Letter of the Code.” Legal systems are slow because they require human “Architects” to resolve this gap. Algorithmic Courts bridge this by encoding legal statutes directly into Dredge Molds.
A “Judge Mold” is a formal logic circuit where the Anchors are specific legal tests (e.g., “The Four Pillars of Fair Use”) and the Slots are the evidence extracted from the case file. We no longer ask an AI “Is this legal?” We ask it to fill a mold that forces it to weigh the evidence against the primitive definitions of the statute. The “Law” becomes a set of compiled constraints that the model must satisfy to reach a verdict.
In a traditional court, a verdict without an opinion is invalid. In an Algorithmic Court, the TRACE slot is the opinion.
By making the LOGIC_TRACE a mandatory first-class citizen of every legal mold, we generate a step-by-step audit of the “Reasoning Pass.” This trace documents exactly which clauses were considered, which contradictions were identified, and how the model resolved them. This transparency allows human lawyers to “appeal” the AI’s decision by pointing to specific logical errors in the trace, rather than guessing at a black box’s motivations. We have automated the rationalization of justice.
The foundation of common law is Stare Decisis—standing by things decided. We industrialize this by building a Global Database of Precedent Traces.
When an Algorithmic Court reaches a verdict, the associated Trace is indexed. Future Dredge operations can include these previous traces as “Semantic Anchors.” A model reviewing a new contract is entrained by the “Logic Geometry” of 10,000 previously upheld decisions. This creates a “Cumulative Intelligence” where the legal system gets sharper and more consistent with every case it “reads.” Justice becomes a self-improving dataset.
The first practical application is the Instant Small Claims Court. For low-value disputes (e.g., rental deposits, e-commerce returns), the cost of human lawyers exceeds the value of the claim. By deploying a “Savant Swarm” of legal dredgers, we can provide a binding or advisory ruling in seconds for less than $0.01. The “Court” is simply a high-precision Mold that ingests the two parties’ statements and outputs a Trace and a Verdict. We have finally achieved “Justice at the Speed of Light.”