Methodological Standpoint of Digital Jurisdiction: Functionalism, or Normativism?

With the application of big data and artificial intelligence technology in jurisdiction, a tension is increasingly prominent between the methodologies of functionalism and normativism. The functionalism, by instrumentalist view of law, defines jurisdiction as an activity of social governance, while the normativism, by defining jurisdiction as an activity suitable to the law, upholds the standpoint of judgement by law and a view of primacy of rights. In the practice of digital jurisdiction, the tension between these two methodological standpoints presented as a cognitive division between digital computing and argumentation-and-reasoning in epistemology of law, while in the value of law, it presents as the digital reappearance of a classical dilemma of efficiency and justice, and presents as a double possibility of technical empowering and power-alienation in the realm of legal politics. A pure dualism could not adept to the complicated judicial implementation. The future digital jurisdiction must avoid an either-or choice, and based on the standpoint of "taking normativism as foundation, and functionalism as the instrument", adopt a responsible innovation paradigm of digital jurisdiction, to ensure the kernel value of governance by law.