On the morning of June 13, 2026, an academic lecture themed "The Rule of Law Boundary of Digital Justice" was successfully held in Conference Room 434, Xingmin Building, Xianlin Campus of Nanjing Normal University. The lecture featured Professor Ma Changshan, Dean of the Institute of Digital Rule of Law at East China University of Political Science and Law, as the keynote speaker. It was moderated by Professor He Baisheng from the Law School of Nanjing Normal University, with Professors Wu Yingzi, Associate Professor Han Yuting, and Associate Professor Liu Yun serving as discussants. Students from all levels—undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral—attended the event, which was met with a lively atmosphere.

Professor Ma Changshan began by addressing the rule-of-law transformation in the "three-dimensional world." He noted that the core framework of modern rule of law consists of public law order, judicial order, and rational spirit, which originated in physical time and space and is based on the basic logic of industrial and commercial order, the natural person model, and distributive justice. With the advent of the information revolution, a digital world emerged, elevating humanity from the traditional physical-spiritual two-dimensional world to a "three-dimensional world." The digital world is not a simple mapping of the physical world; rather, through technologies such as digital twins, it exerts a profound reverse-shaping effect on the physical world, characterized by parallelism, mirroring, and mutual clamping. In the judicial field, this transformation is narrowing the gap between "legal truth" and "objective truth," profoundly impacting judicial quality and efficiency.

On the focal issues of digital justice, Professor Ma Changshan outlined four core topics. First, the digital reinvention of judicial principles. Outsourcing of technology leads to insufficient citizen participation; integrated case-handling platforms impact the division of labor and checks among public security, procuratorate, court, and judicial administrative organs; province-wide digital courts challenge jurisdictional rules based on level and territory; and asynchronous hearings affect the principle of immediacy and oral proceedings. Second, the rule-of-law boundary of data-based services. He distinguished between "datafication of business" and "business of data," pointing out that the latter is difficult to delimit, with issues such as asymmetrical data holdings, unclear rights confirmation, incomplete rules, and imbalanced interests, with ordinary citizens often in the most disadvantaged position. Third, the technological rewriting of due process. Traditional rules and discretionary powers are being converted into algorithms, and due to the lack of public participation, technological rewriting tends to favor power holders, resulting in a "technological escape" of digital judicial power. Fourth, the digital reshaping of fairness and justice. The core of digital justice lies not in the distribution of interests per se, but in who controls data and algorithms—including control over data information, control based on algorithms, and control through algorithms.

In response to the above issues, Professor Ma Changshan proposed that digital justice requires threefold balance: first, a balance between judicial activism and judicial restraint. We should move beyond the paradox of activism and restraint and toward judicial equilibrium, where active performance of duties should be reflected as "functional governance" that adheres to responsibilities. Second, a balance between data-based services and digital justice. Data mining and utilization should start from cases and follow the principles of legality, rationality, necessity, and proportionality, with strict control over unnecessary analyses of personal living conditions and movement trajectories. Third, a balance between digital technology and rule-of-law humanism. Human decision-making is based on value judgments and the spirit of the rule of law, while machines rely on probabilistic calculations; the judiciary must maintain warmth and humanistic care, embodying "technology for good and people-oriented" values.

Finally, Professor Ma Changshan summarized six main dimensions for the development of digital justice: upholding the legality of digital power and preventing technological escape; proactively promoting judicial system reform; defining principles of digital justice and adhering to proportionality; constructing digital due process, improving procedures for data use and algorithm applications as well as rights relief; safeguarding minimum digital human rights and maintaining the bottom line of the rule of law; and promoting global digital rule of law. On this basis, he encouraged the students present to face the future, actively embrace the digital era, and contribute to China’s digital rule of law.

In the discussion session, the guests engaged in in-depth academic dialogue with Professor Ma Changshan. Professor Wu Yingzi proposed using "procedural density" as an analytical framework and applying the principle of procedural proportionality to construct a due process system for digital justice. She argued that in the digital age, the communicative rationality of traditional procedures may be eroded by algorithms, data use needs to be proportionate, and procedural safeguards can be designed at high, medium, and low density levels. Associate Professor Han Yuting discussed the challenges of dataism to normative logic and the protection of rights for digitally disadvantaged groups, pointing out that unjust rulings in previous cases may accumulate through big-data systems, further solidifying unjust tendencies in judicial adjudication. He emphasized that judges need not only to enhance their professional legal competence but also to improve their basic digital literacy, lest they be left behind by the times. Associate Professor Liu Yun, drawing on her research experience in intelligent element adjudication, shared her insights on learning digital justice, believing that the crux of digital justice lies not in judicial digitalization itself, but in how to maintain the rule of law and continue to develop the spirit of the rule of law in the era of digital justice. In his concluding remarks, Professor He Baisheng stressed that without studying digital law, it would be difficult to meet the work requirements of public security, procuratorate, and court systems, as digital justice has permeated every aspect of judicial work. He encouraged students to seize learning opportunities and fill in relevant knowledge gaps.

This lecture, grounded in the frontier of digital rule of law, was rich in content and broad in vision, providing students and faculty with systematic and cutting-edge academic guidance on the core issues of judicial transformation in the digital era. It also significantly contributed to advancing teaching and research in the field of digital law at the Law School. The lecture concluded with warm applause.

Text by: Hao Junjie

Images by: Graduate Student Union of the Law School