As we mentioned in our previous post, we will be presenting our work in progress on “probabilistic interpretation” at this year’s Federalist Society Annual Faculty Conference. Since the conference is in San Francisco, our talk will make reference to the fictional Starfleet Command (from the Star Trek sci fi series): imagine going warp drive and beaming down to “Planet Newgarth” during the tumult over the Case of the Spelencean Explorers, a make-believe murder prosecution professor Lon Fuller wrote about in the late 1940s on Earth. It’s the year 4299 A.D., so why are there no “machine judges” on the Supreme Court of Newgarth? In our talk, we imagine just such a scenario and discuss how a machine might decide (not just predict the outcome of) a close case.