Abstract :
[en] This thesis investigates three digital innovations in the Belgian justice system, introduced over the past three decades as part of broader judicial “modernization” programs. Promoted as remedies for long-standing criticisms of inefficiency, opacity, and delays within the judiciary, their trajectories nevertheless prove fragmented and heterogeneous, continually reshaped by local practices and professional strategies. It seeks to understand how these innovations shape — and are shaped by — judicial practices, while also exploring the broader dynamics of “digital change” across contrasting judicial settings. The analysis draws on seven in-depth case studies, conducted around three digital infrastructures — juriDict at the Council of State, RegSol in the commercial courts, and MaCH in the police courts — following an action-centred methodology attentive to the processes of development, design, maintenance, and use. Four analytical perspectives, drawn respectively from Science and Technology Studies and from the sociology of organized action, public action, and professional groups, are mobilized to examine the socio-material practices and socio-technical infrastructures that underpin judicial work.
By situating the digitalization of these jurisdictions within the longer trajectory of judicial reforms, the thesis shows how it both extends and reconfigures earlier organizational and managerial transformations. Through a collective and iterative approach, it offers a situated understanding of the conditions that shape the lifecycle of these infrastructures — from design to everyday use — and highlights their role as vantage points for observing professional, normative and political changes. These transformations gradually sediment through frictions, adaptations, and circumventions. As such, digital infrastructures constitute both sites and actants in their co-production. They reshape how discretion is exercised, what counts as “good legal work,” and how authority and power are distributed. What emerges, therefore, is not a singular “digital justice,” but multiple and contingent forms of partial digitalization that unfold differently across jurisdictions, reflecting the negotiated and sustained-through-practice nature of judicial digital transformation.
