Description
Book SynopsisComputational Legal Studies offers a visionary introduction to the computational turn in law and the resulting emergence of the computational legal studies field. It explores how computational data creation, collection and analysis techniques are transforming the way in which we comprehend and study the law, and the implications that this has for the future of legal studies.
Featuring contributions from a diverse set of experts, this thought-provoking book considers the implications of computationally enabled research and the future trajectory of the field. It discusses how technological, scientific and methodological developments are not only making the traditional practice of law more efficient but are also creating new perspectives on the law and shaping how we understand it. Chapters draw on a range of examples of computational legal research to demonstrate how a wide variety of research methods, including natural language processing, machine learning, agent-based modelling, and network analysis, are transforming the relationship between law and computation.
This book will prove to be a stimulating read for legal academics looking for a better understanding of this emerging field and for law students interested in new legal research techniques. It will also be a valuable resource for legal firms and computational social scientists interested in examining how law is adopting computational methods.
Trade Review'This book situates computational analysis of law among overlapping research areas and deepens one s sense of the field as vitally distinct. The field is equally transnational and transubstantive, and the legal texts of interest are transmodal (spanning cases, statutes, administrative regulations, and much else). Each chapter reflects all those rich variations, while also highlighting the field s core methods. It is, and will continue to be, an important reference volume for those who hope to produce or consume the best computational legal studies.' --Joseph Scott Miller, University of Georgia, School of Law, US
'Long overdue and perfectly timed, this book connects daring ideas with cutting-edge research methods to examine legal developments and legal practices. It is an indispensable companion for those who are interested in the fast-developing world of computational techniques that change the way we understand and practice law. It provides a vital tool to those who wish to explore the basics, the developments, the novelty, the variety, and the implications of these techniques for the new legal and social reality.'
--Urska adl, European University Institute, Italy
Table of ContentsContents: The emergence of computational legal studies: an introduction 1 Ryan Whalen 1 Sense and similarity: automating legal text comparison 9 Wolfgang Alschner 2 Computational legal studies, digital humanities, and textual analysis 29 Nina Varsava 3 Computational stylometry: predicting the authorship of investment treaty awards 53 Malcolm Langford, Daniel Behn and Runar Lie 4 Automated classification of modes of moral reasoning in judicial decisions 77 Nischal Mainali, Liam Meier, Elliott Ash and Daniel Chen 5 On dragons, caves, teeth, and claws: legal analytics and the problem of court data access 95 Charlotte S. Alexander and Mohammad Javad Feizollahi 6 Computational legal studies in China: progress, challenges, and future 124 Yingmao Tang and John Zhuang Liu 7 Measuring surveillance chill and other regulatory impacts at scale 146 Jonathon W. Penney 8 Understanding content moderation systems: new methods to understand internet governance at scale, over time, and across platforms 166 Nicolas Suzor 9 Accounting for legal values 190 Kevin D. Ashley 10 Is legal cognition computational? (When will DeepVehicle replace Judge Hercules?) 215 Paul Gowder 11 Rule by rules 238 Michael A. Livermore 12 Purposes and challenges of legal citation network analysis on case law 265 Dafne van Kuppevelt, Gijs van Dijck and Marcel Schaper 13 Needles in a haystack: using network analysis to identify cases that are cited for general principles of law by the European Court of Human Rights 293 Henrik Palmer Olsen and Magnus Esmark 14 Agent-based modeling for legal studies 312 Alex Schwartz 15 Analyzing high volumes of German court decisions in an interdisciplinary class of law and computer science students 328 Janis Beckedorf, Dirk Hartung and Phillip Sittig Index 345
