WASHINGTON, D.C. — Associate Justice Samuel Alito referenced Anthropic's Claude AI during oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday, posing a question to the petitioner's counsel about whether the artificial intelligence system should be asked to decide the case being heard. "Well, just out of curiosity, do you think we should ask Claude to decide this case?" Alito said, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

The case before the court was Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties, which relates to the ability of federal courts to confirm arbitration awards. Claude, a large language model owned by Anthropic, had little to do with the underlying legal dispute at issue in the case. Alito, one of the Supreme Court's conservative members, directed his question to Adam Unikowsky, the petitioner's counsel in the matter and a lawyer at Jenner & Block who has argued more than a dozen cases before the nation's highest court.

Alito's question appeared to be directed at Unikowsky's known interest in AI's application to legal work. Unikowsky has experimented with using artificial intelligence in legal practice. The record of Monday's oral arguments does not include a direct response from Unikowsky to the justice's inquiry about having Claude decide the case.

In June 2024, Unikowsky argued that AI "can accurately decide cases and write judicial opinions." As part of his experimentation with the technology, he gave Claude the briefs for several Supreme Court cases. He found that Claude "consistently decides cases correctly."

Unikowsky also found that when Claude's decision differed from how the Supreme Court actually decided a case, its "disposition is invariably reasonable." Last year, he experimented with allowing Claude to present an oral argument before a court. He concluded from that experience that courts "should permit robot lawyers at oral arguments and shouldn't discourage this practice."

The court took no formal action in connection with Alito's remark during the proceedings.