ITR-SCOTUS: A Resource for Collaborative Research in Speech Technology, Linguistics, Decision Processes, and the Law

该项目将创建一个数字音频档案，使几个领域的科学家能够处理言语和语言研究中的新研究问题、群体决策中的问题以及人类交流学术的前沿问题。美国最高法院(SCOTUS)自1955年10月3日以来一直在记录其公开诉讼程序。这些录音--现在保存在国家档案馆--跨越近50年，主要包括口头辩论，法官和律师之间以及法官之间间接地进行各种形式的说服和沟通。在整个时期，这些论点都得到了专业的描述，创造了一个无与伦比的音频材料集合，加上高度准确的文字记录。音频--以及其他通过音频捕捉到的活动，如发表意见--为各个学科的研究人员提供了一个独特的机会，让他们从事曾经被认为是研究人员无法企及的新颖和变革性的研究项目。这项工作的主要结果将是对SCOTUS超过6000小时的音频进行完整和持续的存档。它将提供收集的同步(即，时间编码的)成绩单，识别和标记个别说话者，为这些新领域建立新的标记工具，并与研究人员和教职员工共享语料库。政治学家、法律学者、语言学家和计算机科学家之间的这种互动的结果将产生：在具有复杂目标的多方讨论的建模方面的新知识，在小组决策过程分析中的新策略，以及在扩展合作摘要以解决人类交流动态方面的开创性方法。SCOTUS档案将作为一个共享的公共资源得到维护，以加强对美国最高法院的研究和理解。它将向任何有万维网访问权限的人开放。根据过去的经验，主要受众包括：不同领域的研究人员、教师和学生、律师和诉讼当事人，以及视力和听力受损的人。如今，每月有100多万独立用户访问选定的SCOTUS材料。随着SCOTUS档案的完善和更新，以及查询和搜索能力的提高，用户数量应该会大幅增加。通过利用不同搜索社区之间的共同兴趣和有益的互动，该项目将创建一个巨大的数字对象集合。与在数据共享方面经验丰富的合作伙伴合作，旨在彻底改变与实际分散的研究人员团队及其学生合作的能力。

This project will create a digital audio archive that will enablescientists in several fields to approach novel research issues in speech and languagestudies, issues in group decision-making, and issues at the leading edge ofhuman communication scholarship. The Supreme Court of the United States(SCOTUS) has been recording its public proceedings since 3 October 1955.These recordings - now in the National Archives - span nearly five decadesand consist principally of oral arguments in which justices and attorneysengage in various forms of persuasion and communication between bench andbar and, obliquely, among the justices themselves. The arguments have beentranscribed professionally across the entire period, creating a matchlesscollection of audio materials coupled with highly accurate transcripts. Theaudio - along with other activities captured on audio such as theannouncement of opinions - offers a unique opportunity for researchersacross a wide spectrum of disciplines to engage in novel and transformingresearch projects that were once thought beyond the reach of investigators.The chief result of this work will be a complete and continuing archive ofmore than six thousand hours of SCOTUS audio. It will provide synchronized(i.e., time-coded) transcripts of the collection, identify and tagindividual speakers, build new mark-up tools for these new domains, andshare the corpus with researchers and faculty. The result of thisinteraction among political scientists, legal scholars, linguists, andcomputer scientists will yield: new knowledge in the modeling ofmulti-party discussions with complex goals, novel strategies in small group decisionprocess analysis, and path-breaking approaches to extended collaborativecommentary addressing the dynamics of human communication.The SCOTUS archive will be maintained as a shared public resource toenhance study and understanding of the Supreme Court of the United States. It willbe available to anyone with World Wide Web access. Based on pastexperience, principal audiences include: researchers across diverse domains, teachersand students, lawyers and litigants, and the visually- andhearing-impaired.Today, more than a million unique users access selected SCOTUS materialseach month. With a complete and updated SCOTUS archive and improved abilityto query and search, the number of users should expand substantially.By exploiting common interest and beneficial interactions among diverseresearch communities, this project will create a vast collection of digitalobjects. Working with partners experienced in data-sharing, the effort aimsat revolutionizing the ability to collaborate with physically distributedteams of researchers and their students.