Computational Legal Studies™ » computational linguistics

6,000 Pages Tell the World’s History [via GE Data Visualization]

Daniel Martin Katz — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:12:35 +0000

“It’s true. We’ve scanned 6,000 pages of GE’s annual reports to build this interactive visualization. But why? What’s the point? Not only does this provide a rich history of how GE has always been at work building, moving, powering and curing the world, but it is a true reflection of how the economy, U.S. and the world as a whole has progressed from 1892 until 2011. By diving deep into key terms, users can uncover interesting stories about innovation over the last century. Explore for yourself!

About this data: The data in this visualization is sourced from all of GE’s annual reports from 1892 until 2011.”

You Had Me at Hello: How Phrasing Affects Memorability [via arXiv.org]

Daniel Martin Katz — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:52:42 +0000

From the Abstract: “Understanding the ways in which information achieves widespread public awareness is a research question of significant interest. We consider whether, and how, the way in which the information is phrased — the choice of words and sentence structure — can affect this process. To this end, we develop an analysis framework and build a corpus of movie quotes, annotated with memorability information, in which we are able to control for both the speaker and the setting of the quotes. We find significant differences between memorable and non-memorable quotes in several key dimensions. One is lexical distinctiveness: in aggregate, memorable quotes use less common word choices, but at the same time are built upon a scaffolding of common syntactic patterns; another is that memorable quotes tend to be more general in ways that make them easy to apply in new contexts. We also show how the concept of “memorable language” can be extended across domains.”

Judge Peck’s Opinion on Computer Assisted Review (i.e. Predicitve Coding)

Daniel Martin Katz — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:40:35 +0000

See also Monique Da Silva Moore, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group, Defendents (Opinion and Order). as well as this article, this article, this article, this article, etc. from a few days ago (when there was a bit of misreporting on this case). [ HT: Legal Informatics Blog ]

Quantitative Methods for Lawyers Course – Access Syllabus, Full Course Slides, etc. [ Prof. Daniel Katz - MSU Law - Winter 2012 ]

Daniel Martin Katz — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:15:23 +0000

Legal Language Explorer – Presentation @ 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (Jurix 2011)

Daniel Martin Katz — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 06:12:07 +0000

Presentation @ 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems ( Jurix 2011 – Vienna )

View more presentations from Daniel Katz

Announcing the Beta Pre-Release of Legal Language Explorer.com < Search the History of ANY Phrase in the Decisions of the United States Supreme Court >

Daniel Martin Katz — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:13:25 +0000

In partnership with Michigan State University College of Law and Emory Law, today we announce the Beta Pre-Release of a New Web Interface – LegalLanguageExplorer.com. We are just getting started here with this project and anticipate many features that will be rolling out to you in the near future. Please feel free to send us your feedback / comments.

BASIC FEATURES:

Instant Return of a Time Series Plot for One or More Comma Separated Phrases. The default search is currently interstate commerce, railroad, deed (with plots for each of the term displayed simultaneously).

Feel free to test out ANY phrase of Up to Four Words in length.

Here are just a few of our favorites:

Clear and Present Danger
Habeas Corpus
Custodial Interrogation
Due Process
Unconstitutional
Property
Privacy

SCOPE OF COVERAGE:
In the current version, we are offering results for EVERY decision of the United States Supreme Court (1791-2005). We plan to soon expand to other corpora including the U.S. Court of Appeals, etc.

FULL TEXT CASE ACCESS:
Each of the Phrases you search will be highlighted in Blue. If you click on these highlighted phrases you will be taken to the full list of United States Supreme Court decisions that employ this phrase:

ADVANCED FEATURES:
Check out the advanced features including normalization and alternative graphing tools.

PAPER:
Daniel Martin Katz, Michael J. Bommarito II, Julie Seaman, Adam Candeub & Eugene Agichtein, Legal N-Grams? A Simple Approach to Track the ‘Evolution’ of Legal Language in Proceedings of Jurix: The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (Vienna 2011) available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1971953

PRESENTATION & HELPFUL TUTORIAL:
Click on the Image Below and You Will Be Directed to our Presentation at 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems ( Jurix 2011 – Vienna )
This offers some motivation for the project as well as a Brief Slide Based Tutorial Designed to Highlight Various Functions Available on the Site.

TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION:
Michael J. Bommarito, Building Legal Language Explorer: Interactivity and Drill-Down, noSQL and SQL available at http://www.michaelbommarito.com/blog/2011/12/16/building-legal-language-explorer-interactivity-and-drill-down-nosql-and-sql/

How Many Words Are in the Tax Code? [via Slate]

Daniel Martin Katz — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 03:10:25 +0000

Google NGrams: What We Learned From 5 Million Books (and 500 Billion Words) [ TEDxBoston 2011]

Daniel Martin Katz — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 02:20:26 +0000

The Old Bailey Online –> Access 197,000 Trials — [ 1674 -1913 ]

Daniel Martin Katz — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:12:36 +0000

Wordle of the Declaration of Independence — Enjoy the 4th of July!

Daniel Martin Katz — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:01:56 +0000

Introduction to Computing for Complex Systems – Slides and Other Course Materials from ICPSR 2010

Daniel Martin Katz — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:51:50 +0000

I decided to bump this post to front of the blog as I am getting ready to dust off this material in anticipation of the 2011 ICPSR Course in Complex Systems Models in the Social Sciences. The course will be offered as part of Session #2 of the ICPSR Program in Quantitative Methods. It has two components (1) morning lectures on complex systems theory and (2) a late afternoon session on complex systems / computational model implementation.

Unlike many courses that relegate model/data implementation to self-teaching, etc. in the ICPSR Summer Course in Complex Systems, we take implementation seriously. Indeed, I believe our emphasis on implementation is a distinguishing feature of the course. In my experience, implementation mechanics are typically the impediment that many scholars face in generating models capable of being published in academic journals. Implementation is the bridge between concept and scientific contribution.

In the computing module, I (together with my colleagues) highlight the methods of complex systems as well as several environments designed to explore this rich and growing intellectual field. These include Netlogo (agent based models and network models), Vensim (system dynamics / ecological modeling) and Pajek (empirical network analysis). In the final week, we cover a variety of advanced topics:

(a) Community Detection in Networks
(b) Computational Linguistics / Natural Language Processing
(c) Diffusion Models and Mathematical Modeling with Data
(d) Exponential Random Graph (p*) Models
(e) Information Retrieval / Webscraping

Although, we do not work with more advanced languages within the course, those who need to conduct complex analysis are directed to alternatives such as R, Python, Java, etc.

Anyway, the slides were designed to be fully self-contained and thus allow for individually paced study of the relevant material. If you work through the slides carefully you should be able to learn the software as well as many of the core principles associated with the science of complex systems. Although the 2010 course material should be available indefinitely, I do plan to add some new material for the 2011 session. In particular, we plan to highlight Nova — a new software package developed in the Oberlin Computer Science Department by Richard Salter. Stay tuned for more in July / August 2011 ….

Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules [ Bruce and Richards ICAIL 2011]

Daniel Martin Katz — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:57:22 +0000

Bruce, T. R., and Richards, R. C. (2011). Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules. Paper presented at ICAIL 2011

View more presentations from Rc Richards

Inaugural Workshop of the Program on Law and Computation @ University of Houston Law Center

Daniel Martin Katz — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:08:24 +0000