Computational Legal Studies™

Together with Derek Stafford from the University of Michigan Department of Political Science, Hustle and Flow: A Social Network Analysis of the American Federal Judiciary represents our initial foray into Computational Legal Studies. The full paper contains a number of interesting visualizations where we draw various federal judges together on the basis of their shared law clerks (1995-2004). The screen print above is a zoom very center of the center of the network.  Yellow Nodes represent Supreme Court Justices, Green Nodes represent Circuit Court Justices, Blue Nodes represent District Court Justices.

There exist many high quality formal models of judicial decision making including those considering decisions rendered by judges in judicial hierarchy, whistle blowing, etc. One component which might meaningfully contribute to the extent literature is the rigorous consideration of the social and professional relationships between jurists and the impacts (if any) these relationships impose upon outcomes. Indeed, from a modeling standpoint, we believe the “judicial game” is a game on a graph–one where an individual strategic jurist must take stock of time evolving social topology upon which he or she is operating. Even among judges of equal institutional rank, we observe jurists with widely variant levels social authority (specifically social authority follows a power law distribution).

So what does all of this mean? Take whistle blowing — the power law distribution implies that if the average judge has a whistle, the “super-judges” we identify within the paper could be said to have an air horn. With the goal of enriching positive political theory / formal modeling of the courts, we believe the development of a positive theory of judicial social structure can enrich our understanding of the dynamics of prestige and influence. In addition, we believe, at least in part, “judicial peer effects” can help legal doctrine socially spread across the network. In that vein, here is a view of our operationalization of the social landscape … a wide shot of the broader network visualized using the Kamada-Kawai visualization algorithm:

Here is the current abstract for the paper: Scholars have long asserted that social structure is an important feature of a variety of societal institutions. As part of a larger effort to develop a fully integrated model of judicial decision making, we argue that social structure-operationalized as the professional and social connections between judicial actors-partially directs outcomes in the hierarchical federal judiciary. Since different social structures impose dissimilar consequences upon outputs, the precursor to evaluating the doctrinal consequences that a given social structure imposes is a descriptive effort to characterize its properties. Given the difficulty associated with obtaining appropriate data for federal judges, it is necessary to rely upon a proxy measure to paint a picture of the social landscape. In the aggregate, we believe the flow of law clerks reflects a reasonable proxy for social and professional linkages between jurists. Having collected available information for all federal judicial law clerks employed by an Article III judge during the “natural” Rehnquist Court (1995-2004), we use these roughly 19,000 clerk events to craft a series of network based visualizations.   Using network analysis, our visualizations and subsequent analytics provide insight into the path of peer effects in the federal judiciary. For example, we find the distribution of “degrees” is highly skewed implying the social structure is dictated by a small number of socially prominent actors. Using a variety of centrality measures, we identify these socially prominent jurists. Next, we draw from the extant complexity literature and offer a possible generative process responsible for producing such inequality in social authority. While the complete adjudication of a generative process is beyond the scope of this article, our results contribute to a growing literature documenting the highly-skewed distribution of authority across the common law and its constitutive institutions.

dmartink Uncategorized Judicial Decision Making, Judicial Peer Effects, Law as a Complex System, network analysis, Public Law, supreme court

dmartink Uncategorized Judicial Decision Making, Public Law, supreme court

Here is a cool visual for the Martin-Quinn Scores. For those of you not familiar, the Martin-Quinn paper and “MQ Scores” represented a significant breakthrough in the field of judicial politics. On that note, Stephen Jessee & Alexander Tahk have done a nice job both bringing their data up to date and extending their work.  For those interested, click on the visual above and check out all of the relevant links contained within this post.  

dmartink Uncategorized evolution of law, Judicial Decision Making, Public Law, supreme court, visualization

On a recent flight, I read Jeffrey Toobin’s New Yorker Article on Chief Justice Roberts entitled “No More Mr. Nice Guy”.  The exchange quoted above is drawn from this article. While I believe it is appropriate to engage empirical data where available, the underlying discussion is not one exclusively subjectable to empirical inquiry.  Rather, it is, at least in part, a question in need of a formal theoretic model. Justice Roberts and Mr. Katyal are implicitly discussing a “state of the world” not yet realized but which would be realized if the statute were not to exist. What would benefit the discussion is principled manner to adjudicate between these two inferences drawn above.  Namely, it would be useful to fully evaluate what behavior would likely follow if the statute were not to exist.

There exist a variety of mathematical modeling techniques which could inject some much needed rigor into the above discussion. To my knowledge, such an applied model has yet to be offered.  The Supreme Court’s decision in the matter is soon forthcoming. Given the nature of the exchange above, there is reason to believe that if Chief Justice Roberts prevails ….we will get our model as the “state of the world” discussed above will no longer be hypothetical…. 

dmartink Uncategorized Judicial Decision Making, Public Law, supreme court

In my conversations with judicial politics scholars, many lament how many of our existing approaches tend to ignore opinion content.  For those interested in embedding opinion content into existing theories of judicial decision making … consider Yonatan Lupu & James Fowler’s paper recently posted to the SSRN.  

The authors present a strategic model of judicial bargaining over opinion content.  They note … “we find that the Court generates opinions that are better grounded in law when more justices write concurring opinions.”  To generate the specification for “grounding in law” the authors use Kleinberg’s Hubs and Authorities Algorithm calculated at the time the opinion was authored. The Strategic Content Paper is available here. 

The visual above is drawn from a related Fowler project located here.  Another very worthwhile paper authored by Fowler, Johnson, Spriggs, Jeon & Wahlbeck is located here.  

dmartink Uncategorized algorithms, evolution of law, Judicial Decision Making, Public Law, supreme court

This paper written by CLS Blog Co-Founder Daniel Katz and Derek Stafford from the University of Michigan Department of Political Science representes an initial foray into Computational Legal Studies by the graduate students here at the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Complex Systems.  The full paper contains a number of interesting visualizations where we draw various federal judges together on the basis of their shared law clerks (1995-2004).  The screen print above is a zoom very center of the center of the network.  Yellow Nodes represent Supreme Court Justices, Green Nodes represent Circuit Court Justices, Blue Nodes represent Circuit Court Justices.  Here is a wide shot of the broader network visualized using the Kamada-Kawai visualization algorithm:    

Here is the abstract:      Scholars have long asserted that social structure is an important feature of a variety of societal institutions. As part of a larger effort to develop a fully integrated model of judicial decision making, we argue that social structure-operationalized as the professional and social connections between judicial actors-partially directs outcomes in the hierarchical federal judiciary. Since different social structures impose dissimilar consequences upon outputs, the precursor to evaluating the doctrinal consequences that a given social structure imposes is a descriptive effort to characterize its properties. Given the difficulty associated with obtaining appropriate data for federal judges, it is necessary to rely upon a proxy measure to paint a picture of the social landscape. In the aggregate, we believe the flow of law clerks reflects a reasonable proxy for social and professional linkages between jurists. Having collected available information for all federal judicial law clerks employed by an Article III judge during the “natural” Rehnquist Court (1995-2004), we use these roughly 19,000 clerk events to craft a series of network based visualizations.   Using network analysis, our visualizations and subsequent analytics provide insight into the path of peer effects in the federal judiciary. For example, we find the distribution of “degrees” is highly skewed implying the social structure is dictated by a small number of socially prominent actors. Using a variety of centrality measures, we identify these socially prominent jurists. Next, we draw from the extant complexity literature and offer a possible generative process responsible for producing such inequality in social authority. While the complete adjudication of a generative process is beyond the scope of this article, our results contribute to a growing literature documenting the highly-skewed distribution of authority across the common law and its constitutive institutions. 

dmartink Uncategorized Judicial Decision Making, Judicial Peer Effects, Law as a Complex System, Law Clerks, network analysis, Public Law, Sociology of Law