¹ Fowler, James H., Johnson, Timothy R., Spriggs, James F. II, Sangick Jeon and Wahlbeck, Paul J., ‘Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Supreme Court Precedents’, Political Analysis, 15 (2007), 324–346CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fowler, James H. and Sangick Jeon, ‘The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent’, Social Networks, 30 (2008), 16–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bommarito, Michael, Katz, Daniel and Zelner, Jonathan, ‘On the Stability of Community Detection Algorithms for Longitudinal Citation Data’, Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Applications of Social Network Analysis (ASNA) (2009)Google Scholar.

² See, for example, Majone, Giandomenico, ‘Two Logics of Delegation: Agency and Fiduciary Relations in EU Governance’, European Union Politics, 2 (2001), 103–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alter, Karen J., ‘Agents or Trustees? International Courts in Their Political Context’, European Journal of International Relations, 14 (2008), 33–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Garrett, Geoffrey and Weingast, Barry, ‘Ideas, Interests and Institutions: Constructing the EC's Internal Market’, in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds, Ideas and Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Garrett, Geoffrey, Kelemen, Daniel and Schulz, Heiner, ‘The European Court of Justice, National Governments and Legal Integration in the European Union’, International Organization, 52 (1998), 149–176CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephan, Paul B., ‘Courts, Tribunals and Legal Unification – The Agency Problem’, Chicago Journal of International Law (2002), 333–352Google Scholar; Carrubba, Clifford, Gabel, Matthew and Hankla, Charles, ‘Judicial Behavior under Political Constraints: Evidence from the European Court of Justice’, American Political Science Review, 102 (2008), 435–452CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ See, for example, Busch, Marc, ‘Overlapping Institutions, Forum Shopping, and Dispute Settlement in International Trade’, International Organization, 61 (2007), 735–761CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Helfer, Laurence R., ‘Nonconsensual International Lawmaking’, University of Illinois Law Review, 71 (2008), 71–125Google Scholar.

⁵ See, for example, Epstein, Lee and Knight, Jack, The Choices Justices Make (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁶ Poole, Keith T. and Howard Rosenthal, ‘D-NOMINATE after 10 Years: A Comparative Update to Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 26 (2001), 5–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Lupu, Yonatan and Fowler, James H., ‘Strategic Citations to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court’ (unpublished, University of California-San Diego, 2011, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/Sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1358782Google Scholar.

⁸ See, for example, Alec Stone Sweet, ‘On the Constitutionalization of the Convention: The European Court of Human Rights as a Constitutional Court’, Revue trimestrielle des droits de l'homme, 80 (2009), 923–944Google Scholar.

⁹ See, for example, Alter, Karen J., The European Court's Political Power: Selected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Staton, Jeffrey K. and Moore, Will H., ‘Judicial Power in Domestic and International Politics’, International Organization, 65 (2011), 553–587CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Voeten, Erik, ‘The Impartiality of International Judges: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights’, American Political Science Review, 102 (2008), 417–433CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ The twenty-seven EU members and Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey and Ukraine.

¹¹ Voeten, ‘The Impartiality of International Judges’.

¹² Although Article 38 allows judicial decisions to be a ‘subsidiary means for the determination of the rules of law’.

¹³ Shahabuddeen, Mohammed, Precedent in the World Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Busch, ‘Overlapping Institutions, Forum Shopping, and Dispute Settlement in International Trade’.

¹⁵ 13 August 1981, Young, James and Webster v. The United Kingdom. More generally, the ‘orthodox view’ is that a state ‘is obliged to observe only those judgements made directly against it’. See Greer, Steven, The European Convention on Human Rights: Achievements, Problems and Prospects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 279CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Wildhaber, Luzius, ‘Precedent in the European Court of Human Rights’, in Paul Mahoney, ed., Protection des droits de l'homme: la perspective européenne, mélanges à la mémoire de Rolv Ryssdal (Cologne: Heymann, 2000), pp. 1529–1545Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Busch, ‘Overlapping Institutions, Forum Shopping, and Dispute Settlement in International Trade’.

¹⁸ Carrubba et al., ‘Judicial Behavior under Political Constraints’.

¹⁹ Recent examples are cases on the extradition of suspected terrorists to countries where they might be tortured (e.g. Ramzy v. Netherlands, Chahal v. The United Kingdom, and Saadi v. Italy).

²⁰ Most ECtHR judgements on the merit are reached by panels of seven judges. Some cases are referred to the seventeen-judge Grand Chamber.

²¹ See, for example, John Henry Merryman, ‘The Authority of Authority: What the California Supreme Court Cited in 1950’, Stanford Law Review, 6 (1954), 613–673CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Peter, ‘Difficult Cases and the Display of Authority’, Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, 1 (1985), 209–221Google Scholar; Tyler, Tom R. and Gregory Mitchell, ‘Legitimacy and the Empowerment of Discretionary Legal Authority: The United States Supreme Court and Abortion Rights’, Duke Law Journal, 43 (1994), 703–815CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 817–44; Corley, Pamela C., Howard, Robert M. and Nixon, David C., ‘The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Use of the Federalist Papers’, Political Research Quarterly, 58 (2005), 329–340CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hansford, Thomas G. and Spriggs, James F. II, The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Hume, Robert J., ‘The Use of Rhetorical Sources by the U.S. Supreme Court’, Law & Society Review, 40 (2006),817–844CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² See, for example, Carrubba et al., ‘Judicial Behavior under Political Constraints’; Cichowski, Rachel A., The European Court and Civil Society: Litigation, Mobilization, and Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Helfer, Laurence R. and Anne-Marie Slaughter, ‘Why States Create International Tribunals: A Response to Professors Posner and Yoo’, California Law Review, 93 (2005), 899–956Google Scholar.

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²⁴ Bailey, Michael A. and Forrest Maltzman, ‘Does Legal Doctrine Matter? Unpacking Law and Policy Preferences on the U.S. Supreme Court’, American Political Science Review, 102 (2008), 369–384CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ See, for example, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Stephenson, Matthew, ‘Informative Precedent and Intrajudicial Communication’, American Political Science Review, 96 (2002), 755–766Google Scholar.

²⁶ See, for example, Lax, Jeffrey R. and Cameron, Charles M., ‘Bargaining and Opinion Assignment on the US Supreme Court’, Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, 23 (2007), 276–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lupu and Fowler, ‘Strategic Citations to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court’.

²⁷ Slaughter, Anne-Marie, ‘A Global Community of Courts’, Harvard International Law Journal, 44 (2003), 191–219Google Scholar, p. 192. Sociologists have long analysed the ‘juridical field’ in this way, inspired by the work of Bourdieu; see Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field’, Hastings Law Journal, 38 (1987), 814–853Google Scholar. This approach stresses that there are unique qualities that separate legal practice from other social activities but that the field is not a self-contained system, autonomous from the political and social realms.

²⁸ Shapiro, Martin, Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

²⁹ Alec Stone Sweet, ‘On the Constitutionalization of the Convention’, p. 1Google Scholar.

³⁰ Similar arguments have been advanced in the context of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). See, for example, Weiler, Joseph, ‘A Quiet Revolution: The European Court of Justice and its Interlocutors’, Comparative Political Studies, 26 (1994), 510–534CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ See, for example, Helfer, Laurence R. and Anne-Marie Slaughter, ‘Toward a Theory of Effective Supranational Adjudication’, Yale Law Journal, 107 (1997), 273–391CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³³ Supervision of the Execution of Judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, 3rd Annual Report, p. 51.

³⁴ Supervision of the Execution of Judgements, p. 63. A final resolution is adopted by the Committee of Ministers when it is satisfied that a government has implemented an ECtHR judgement.

³⁵ Supervision of the Execution of Judgements, p. 7.

³⁶ See, for example, Keller, Helen and Alec Stone Sweet, A Europe of Rights: The Impact of the ECHR on National Legal Systems (Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

³⁷ ECtHR, judgement of 24 July 2003, Karner v. Austria.

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³⁹ Chester v. Secretary of State for Justice & Another [2010] EWCA Civ 1439 (17 December 2010).

⁴⁰ See, for example, Keller and Stone Sweet, A Europe of Rights.

⁴¹ Harris, , ‘Difficult Cases and the Display of Authority’, pp. 209–10Google Scholar. See also Hume, ‘The Use of Rhetorical Sources by the U.S. Supreme Court’.

⁴² Troper, Michael and Grzegorczyk, Christophe, ‘Precedent in France’, in D. Neil MacCormick and Robert S. Summers, eds, Interpreting Precedents: A Comparative Study (Aldershot, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 1997)Google Scholar; Powell, Emilia J. and Mitchell, Sara M., ‘The International Court of Justice and the World's Three Legal Systems’, Journal of Politics, 69 (2007), 397–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ This logic can be further explained by way of analogy. Suppose that scientific articles within a given field tend to cite other articles within the same field more often than not (e.g., political science articles cite other political science articles, etc.). As the network of academic citations develops, therefore, communities of papers will form based on the academic field because those papers tend to cite each other more than they cite papers in other fields (and therefore other communities).

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⁴⁵ Merryman, , ‘The Authority of Authority’, pp. 1–2Google Scholar. Also quoted in Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Emilia Justyna Powell, Domestic Law Goes Global: Legal Traditions and International Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

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⁵¹ Gerards, ‘Judicial Deliberations in the European Court of Human Rights’.

⁵² This figure includes only judgements on the merits.

⁵³ See, for example, Fowler et al., ‘Network Analysis and the Law’.

⁵⁴ Approximately 15.6 per cent of the ECtHR decisions are outside the main cluster (compared with 16.2 per cent in the USSC's network). Cases that cite no precedent would all have hub scores of zero. The Tobit model we use in our analysis is designed to address the fact that we have excluded such cases from our sample.

⁵⁵ The excluded cases are those designated importance level 3 by the Court.

⁵⁶ This article is only invoked in conjunction with other Convention rights, limiting its application since the Convention includes no socio-economic rights other than education. The optional Protocol 12 remedies this but is ratified by less than half of Council of Europe member states.

⁵⁷ Fowler et al., ‘Network Analysis and the Law’.

⁵⁸ For USSC citations, we use the data provided by Fowler and Jeon, ‘The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent’. The citations follow patterns common in large-scale networks, including scientific citation networks (see Albert, Reka and Barabási, Albert-Laszlo, ‘Statistical Mechanics of Complex Networks’, Reviews of Modern Physics, 74 (2002), 47–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boerner, Katy, Maru, Jeegar T. and Robert L., Goldstone, ‘The Simultaneous Evolution of Author and Paper Networks’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101 (2004), 5266–5273CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borgatti, Stephen P. and Everett, Martin G., ‘Models of Core/Periphery Structures’, Social Networks, 21 (1999), 375–395CrossRefGoogle Scholar)). In both courts, the patterns of inward citations closely resemble the power-law distribution of other complex networks, often referred to as scale-free networks, including the World Wide Web ( Albert, Reka, Jeong, Hawoong and Albert-Laszlo Barabási, ‘The Diameter of the World Wide Web’, Nature, 401 (1999), 130–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar) and social networks ( Ebel, Holger, Mielsch, Lutz-Ingo and Bornholdt, Stefan, ‘Scale-free Topology of e-mail Networks’, Physical Review E, 66 (2002), 035103-1–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Network theorists argue that this distribution results from a process called ‘preferential attachment’ (Albert-Laszlo Barabási and Reka Albert, ‘Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks’, Science, 286 (1999), 509–12), which in this context suggests that the more often a case has been cited in this past, the higher the probability that it will be cited in new cases.

⁵⁹ Fowler et al., ‘Network Analysis and the Law’; Fowler and Jeon, ‘The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent’.

⁶⁰ The Protocol went into force on 1 November 1998.

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