DHB: A Computational Approach to Understanding the Dynamics of the Judicial System

DHB：了解司法系统动态的计算方法

• 批准号: 0624067
• 负责人: Wayne McIntosh
• 金额: $ 75万
• 依托单位: University of Maryland, College Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0624067&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DHB; Computational; Approach; Understanding; Dynamics

Previous research of judicial systems has faced a trade-off between large scale quantitative inquiries focused on readily-counted behaviors, and smaller studies that allow closer examination of legal texts. This project marks the first attempt to apply information retrieval and computational linguistics to the study of the US Supreme Court. In addition, future research will be facilitated by assembling a Supreme Court Text Collection (SCTC). During the course of this project, the investigators will compile, organize, and annotate more than 15,000 legal documents associated with cases heard by the US Supreme Court over the last half-century, and develop a set of semi-automated analytical tools to examine them more closely. The SCTC will be available to the larger academic community for additional research endeavors. The application of computational techniques to model the US judicial system represents an opportunity to overcome many of the bottlenecks associated with traditional manual, labor-intensive methods in political science, and also provides a new environment for the advancement of information retrieval and computational linguistic techniques. This project will employ a novel text-based computational model of the legal system with both explanatory and predictive power that will allow us to pose broad classes of theoretically interesting research questions. More importantly, this interdisciplinary approach, applying computational techniques to the study of legal systems, has the potential to revolutionize both the research agendas and the education of future social scientists. To facilitate this progress, the investigators plan to develop a course, "Computational Approaches to Analysis of Political Texts," and related research workshops that will equip other scholars, graduate students, and select undergraduate students with the skills necessary to apply computational methodologies to their own research questions.

以前的司法系统研究面临着一个权衡，大规模的定量调查集中在容易计数的行为，和较小的研究，允许更密切的审查法律的文本。 该项目标志着首次尝试将信息检索和计算语言学应用于美国最高法院的研究。此外，未来的研究将通过汇编最高法院文本集（SCTC）来促进。 在这个项目的过程中，调查人员将汇编，组织和注释与美国最高法院在过去半个世纪中审理的案件有关的15，000多份法律的文件，并开发一套半自动分析工具来更仔细地检查它们。SCTC将提供给更大的学术界进行额外的研究工作。应用计算技术来模拟美国的司法系统代表了一个机会，以克服许多与传统的手工，劳动密集型方法在政治学的瓶颈，也提供了一个新的环境，为信息检索和计算语言技术的进步。这个项目将采用一种新的基于文本的计算模型的法律的系统的解释和预测能力，这将使我们能够提出广泛的理论上有趣的研究问题。 更重要的是，这种跨学科的方法，将计算技术应用于法律的系统的研究，有可能彻底改变研究议程和未来社会科学家的教育。为了促进这一进展，研究人员计划开发一门课程，“政治文本分析的计算方法”，以及相关的研究研讨会，这些研讨会将使其他学者，研究生和选择的本科生具备将计算方法应用于自己的研究问题所需的技能。