Legal Discrimination in Focus: Empirical Assessment of LLMs under the European Convention on Human Rights.

This study evaluates the ability of large language models (LLMs) to recognise and reason about discrimination within the legal framework of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Going beyond conventional bias detection, we assess whether LLMs can apply, interpret, and explain legal concepts in line with judicial reasoning. We introduce a formalised definition of discrimination derived from ECHR case law and apply it in a structured empirical test suite. Our findings reveal systematic limitations in current models’ ability to adhere to legal standards, offering practical insights into enhancing fairness-aware AI in the legal domain.