Date of Graduation

Spring 5-23-2026

Document Access

Project/Capstone - Global access

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Urban and Public Affairs

College/School

College of Arts and Sciences

Department/Program

Urban and Public Affairs

First Advisor

Dr. Patrick Murphy

Second Advisor

Dr. Kresten Froistad-Martin

Abstract

This Capstone project examines how Bay Area municipal governments, specifically the City and County of San Francisco, Alameda County, San Mateo County, and Santa Clara County, are adopting and governing predictive litigation technologies, and what these practices reveal about the possibilities and limitations of data justice in advancing racial equity, transparency, and public accountability. Drawing on a qualitative, comparative case study methodology analyzing procurement contracts, AI governance policies, California Public Records Act (CPRA) disclosures, and semi-structured interviews gathered across fifteen municipal legal institutions, the research applies an interdisciplinary theoretical framework synthesizing John Rawls’s distributive fairness, Nancy Fraser’s recognition justice, Tom R. Tyler’s procedural legitimacy, and Linnet Taylor’s data justice to move beyond narrow debates about algorithmic accuracy toward a structural analysis of power, accountability, and equity. Findings reveal a consistent pattern across all four counties: AI-assisted tools are already deeply embedded in prosecutorial analytics, evidence management, legal research, and pretrial decision-making, yet no institution examined conducted a pre-adoption equity impact assessment, required independent vendor bias testing, established community advisory structures, or implemented proactive public disclosure of AI governance policies; failures exemplified most starkly by the San Mateo County District Attorney’s use of Closure Intelligence, a purpose-built prosecutorial analytics platform procured without competitive bidding, equity review, or any disclosure mechanism for affected defendants. These governance failures are not primarily technical but structural, reflecting institutional choices to prioritize efficiency over the procedural fairness, recognition of marginalized communities, and democratic accountability that legitimate legal administration demands, and the project concludes with jurisdiction-specific recommendations, including mandatory AI inventories, enforceable vendor accountability provisions, defendant notification standards, independent bias audits, and formal community advisory structures, advancing the central argument that artificial intelligence in municipal legal systems must remain subordinate to democratic accountability and the enduring pursuit of equal justice.

Keywords: predictive litigation analytics, artificial intelligence governance, data justice, algorithmic bias, municipal government, racial equity, procedural legitimacy, Bay Area legal systems, public accountability, AI ethics

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