As in previous years, the Faculty participated in the popular science event Researchers’ Night 2026 with its PRAVRI Courtroom. This year, the theme of the PRAVRI Courtroom was Children’s Rights in the Hands of Artificial Intelligence. The activity presented legal research in the field of digital technologies (particularly artificial intelligence) and the protection of our rights (in this case, children’s rights) in the contemporary public sector. This research is being conducted as part of the project Legal and Ethical Implications of the Dehumanization of the Judiciary and Public Administration through Legal Technology – TECHNO-IUS (uniri-mzi-25-31) – NextGenerationEU.
In the role of “jurors”, and following an engaging introduction to a mock court hearing concerning an AI system introduced by a regional self-government unit to process requests related to children’s right to transportation to school, the children put forward numerous interesting arguments, such as: “A robot cannot make decisions about people”, “Artificial intelligence is dangerous if I don’t know exactly what it does” and “Artificial intelligence does not understand people’s problems”. Their reflections clearly demonstrate that it is never too early to open up discussions on such topics and that, from the young age, children should be introduced to content that encourages them to think critically about current issues and phenomena. As they grow up, such topics will become increasingly complex, while understanding their consequences will become ever more important.
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Researchers’ Night 2026 brought together more than 2,000 visitors of all ages, who were welcomed at 40 science stations by more than 250 researchers from the University of Rijeka. This year, the team from the Faculty of Law in Rijeka consisted of Prof. Dr. Ivana Kunda, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danijela Vrbljanac, assistants and doctoral candidates Narda Krnetić Blečić and Sandro Miličković, and fifth-year law students Marta Laco and Sara Glamočić.
All constituent units of the University took part in the programme, with science explored throughout the evening through experiments, games, workshops, simulations, research challenges, conversations with researchers, and a courtroom. The event was held on 25 September 2026 at Exportdrvo from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and was organized by the University of Rijeka Centre for the Popularization and Promotion of Science and the University of Rijeka Foundation, as part of the BlueConnect 3.0 project. The City of Rijeka was also a partner of the event, while this year’s additional partners included the Rijeka Centre of Technical Culture and the Natural History Museum of Rijeka.
More information about the event is available on the event’s official website: https://socri.uniri.hr/noc-istrazivaca-2026/. The Faculty of Law in Rijeka also participated in the I Research @ UNIRI 2026 exhibition, available here: https://socri.uniri.hr/ja-istrazujem-uniri-2026/ where the Faculty’s exhibit may be accessed here: https://socri.uniri.hr/pravo-djeteta-u-rukama-umjetne-inteligencije/.
