District Court

This round, gleaming starscraper resembles a shiny bullet set on end, with mirrored transplas windows and a polished carbosteel dome. Inside, the main lobby is a riotous bedlam as crowds of people wait for their cases to be heard. Anyone who is the subject of a civil complaint who wants to settle their case and leave can go to a private room and receive a binding arbitration settlement from an AI mediator. These AI arbitrations have been growing in popularity in recent years, both among people who lack the time and money for a court hearing and among the district municipal governments that want to quickly resolve parking-ticket disputes and civil ordinance violations. They also tend to be popular with individuals who work in fields related to artificial intelligence and seem to know just which arguments are most likely to get a complaint dismissed.

If a person wants to argue their case, they need to visit one of the two hundred courtrooms on the upper floors and plead their case in front of a judge. Defendants facing fines of 10,000 credits or less receive AI legal assistance rather than a lawyer. High-profile criminal cases take place here as well; human defense lawyers and prosecutors argue such cases in front of a telepresent jury.

To ensure the justice system is unquestionably fair and nobody is hacking into the AI mediators or manipulating court records, the entire building functions as a Faraday cage, blocking any wireless signal in or out. Inside, PADs work but cannot access the Network. The only connection to the Net is via a series of underground fiber-optic trunk lines guarded by the NAPD’s elite counterintrusion teams.