Workshop: Computerized Content Analysis and the Law

从广义上讲，法律研究的核心是与文本有关：成文法、宪法、司法意见和摘要。这些文本包含了构成和塑造法律的规则、判决和论点。具有讽刺意味的是，法学的定量实证研究在很大程度上忽略了这些文献，这是有充分理由的。迄今为止，很少有工具能够以具有成本效益的方式系统地分析大量法律文本。然而，在计算语言学和计算机科学领域，自动化内容分析已经取得了重要进展。在这些学科中，已经开发了允许分析文本中的模式和相互关系的工具。不幸的是，政治科学家——尤其是司法政治学者——在很大程度上没有意识到这些方法论工具。会议的中心目的是克服学科之间的差距。会议将汇集政治学家、法律学者、计算语言学家和计算机科学家，探讨如何使用现代自动化内容分析工具来分析复杂的法律文件。

At its core, the study of the law -- broadly conceived -- is concerned with texts: statutes, constitutions, judicial opinions, and briefs. These texts contain the rules, judgments, and arguments that make up and shape the law. Ironically, quantitative empirical scholarship on the law has largely ignored these documents, and with good reason. To date, few tools have been available that would allow systematic analysis of a large number of legal texts in a cost-effective manner. In the fields of computational linguistics and computer science, however, there have been important advances in automated content analysis. In these disciplines, tools have been developed that permit the analysis of patterns and interrelationships in a text. Unfortunately, political scientists -- and scholars of judicial politics in particular -- are largely unaware of these methodological tools. The central purpose of the proposed conference is to overcome this gap between the disciplines. The conference will bring together political scientists, legal scholars, computational linguists, and computer scientists to explore how modern automated content analysis tools might be used to analyze complex legal documents.