Reading the High Court at a distance: topic modelling the legal subject matter and judicial activity of the High Court of Australia, 1903–2015
Reading the High Court at a distance: topic modelling the legal subject matter and judicial activity of the High Court of Australia, 1903–2015
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远距离解读高等法院：1903-2015 年澳大利亚高等法院的法律主题和司法活动的主题建模
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发表时间：
2016
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Rahmani
中科院分区：
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作者：
D. Carter;James J Brown;A. Rahmani
在本文中，我们将被称为“主题建模”的定量文本分析方法应用于澳大利亚重要的法律文本语料库：澳大利亚高等法院从 1903 年至 2015 年的判决。澳大利亚高等法院一直是研究和分析的长期主题。它是澳大利亚司法体系中的最高法院，也是澳大利亚历史上许多最重要的法律理论和实践争论的场所。我们发现，这项研究生成的主题模型能够对高等法院的司法工作量及其法律主题随时间的变化进行一系列独特、新颖和强有力的观察。此外，本文揭示了主题建模作为研究法律文本和实践的方法的可行性和价值，可以有效地补充其他法律学术方法。
In this article we apply the method of quantitative textual analysis known as ‘topic modelling’ to a significant Australian legal text corpus: that of judgments of the High Court of Australia from 1903 to 2015. The High Court of Australia has been a perennial topic for study and analysis. It is the highest court in the Australian judicial hierarchy and the site of many of the most significant contests of legal doctrine and practice in Australian history. We find that the topic models generated by this research enable the development of a range of unique, novel and robust observations of the High Court’s judicial workload and the shifting make-up of its legal subject matter over time. Moreover, this article reveals the feasibility and value of topic modelling as a method for the study of legal texts and practices that might fruitfully complement other methods of legal scholarship.