Network analysis and the law: Measuring the legal importance of precedents at the US Supreme Court
Network analysis and the law: Measuring the legal importance of precedents at the US Supreme Court
复制标题
DOI：
10.1093/pan/mpm011
复制
发表时间：
2007-06-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Wahlbeck, Paul J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fowler, James H.;Johnson, Timothy R.;Wahlbeck, Paul J.
我们构建了由美国最高法院撰写的26，681份多数意见以及从1791年到2005年引用它们的案例的完整网络。我们描述了一种使用案件内和案件间引用模式来创建重要性评分的方法，该评分可以识别任何给定时间点最高法院法律网络中最具法律相关性的先例。我们的措施是上级现有的基于网络的替代品，例如，提供信息的情况下，重要性不明显，在简单的引用计数。我们还通过表明我们的措施与州法院、美国上诉法院和美国最高法院未来的引用行为密切相关来证明我们的措施的有效性。在这样做的时候，我们表明，网络分析是一种可行的方式来衡量一个案件是如何中央在法院的法律，并建议它可以用来衡量其他法律的概念。
We construct the complete network of 26,681 majority opinions written by the U.S. Supreme Court and the cases that cite them from 1791 to 2005. We describe a method for using the patterns in citations within and across cases to create importance scores that identify the most legally relevant precedents in the network of Supreme Court law at any given point in time. Our measures are superior to existing network-based alternatives and, for example, offer information regarding case importance not evident in simple citation counts. We also demonstrate the validity of our measures by showing that they are strongly correlated with the future citation behavior of state courts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. In so doing, we show that network analysis is a viable way of measuring how central a case is to law at the Court and suggest that it can be used to measure other legal concepts.