Hotspots and Evolutionary Trends in China’s Digital Justice Research: A Knowledge Graph Analysis via CiteSpace

The digitalization and intelligentization of China’s rule of law have emerged as a prominent trend over the past decade. This trend has further driven the deep integration of digital technology with judicial work. This study aims to reveal the research hotspots and evolutionary trends in digital justice. It employs CiteSpace,a visualization software, to analyze 257 articles from CSSCI (Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index) Journals and Chinese Core Journals Catalogue (Peking University Core Journal Directory) in the field of digital justice in China from 2014 to 2024. Domestic research on digital justice has demonstrated a year-on-year growth trend. The findings indicate that this research primarily focuses on three themes: judicial technology, judicial objectives, and similar-case retrieval. The evolution of this research can be divided into three stages: embryonic, developmental, and stable development. It started with preliminary work on smart courts, subsequently embracing the integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain. Finally, it expanded to address digital rights protection and the broader integration of digital technology with law. The key to future research lies in the theory of digital judicial proactivity. In terms of research methods, a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional perspective is emphasized, while practical innovation remains paramount in research scenarios.