Journal article
Emergence of network effects and predictability in the judicial system
As courts strive to simultaneously remain self-consistent and adapt to new legal challenges, a complex network of of citations between decided cases is established. Using network science methods to analyze the underlying patterns of citations between cases can help us understand the large-scale mechanisms which shape the judicial system.
Here, we use the case-to-case citation structure of the Court of Justice of the European Union to examine this question. Using a link-prediction model, we show that over time the complex network of citations evolves in a way which improves our ability to predict new citations. Investigating the factors which enable prediction over time, we find that the content of the case documents plays a decreasing role, whereas both the predictive power and significance of the citation network structure itself show a consistent increase over time.
Finally, our analysis enables us to validate existing citations and recommend potential citations for future cases within the court.
Language: | English |
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Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group UK |
Year: | 2021 |
Pages: | 2740 |
ISSN: | 20452322 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-021-82430-x |
ORCIDs: | 0000-0001-8486-8752 , Lehmann, Sune and 0000-0001-7724-0094 |