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Network Analysis and Legal Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Niels Petersen  and
Emanuel V. Towfigh

Extract

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In their contribution in this issue Mattias Derlén and Johan Lindholm use social network analysis to show that the European Court of Justice is a precedent-driven constitutional court that is comparable to the US Supreme Court with regard to the citation of precedents. The article and its use of network analysis as a method provoked a lively debate on the editorial board of the German Law Journal about comparative law theory and methods generally and the place of empirical (including network) analyses in the comparative law discipline. For this reason, the editorial board commissioned this “special section” of contributions dedicated broadly to approaches to comparative law. In his essay in this section, for example, Jens Frankenreiter offers a detailed assessment of Derlén's and Lindholm's analysis. In this piece, we take a broader perspective and look at the utility and the limits of network analysis for legal scholarship generally.

Type
Special Section Network Analysis and Comparative Law Methods
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , 01 May 2017 , pp. 695 - 700
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by German Law Journal, Inc. 

References

1 See Derlén & Lindholm in this issue.Google Scholar

2 See Frankenreiter in this issue.Google Scholar

3 Nicola Lettieri et al., A Computational Approach for the Experimental Study of Eu Case Law: Analysis and Implementation, 6:56 Social Network Analysis and Mining 1 (2016).Google Scholar

4 See Whalen, Ryan, Legal Networks: The Promises and Challenges of Legal Network Analysis, 2016 Michigan State Law Review 539 (2016).Google Scholar

5 See id. at 547.Google Scholar

6 Fowler, James H. et al., Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Precedents At the U.S. Supreme Court, 15 Political Analysis 324 (2007).Google Scholar

7 Yonatan Lupu & Erik Voeten, Precedent in International Courts: A Network Analysis of Case Citations By the European Court of Human Rights, 42 British Journal of Political Science 413 (2012).Google Scholar

8 Martin Gelter & Siems, Mathias M., Language, Legal Origins, and Culture Before the Courts: Cross-Citations Between Supreme Courts in Europe, 21 Supreme Court Economic Review 215 (2013).Google Scholar

9 Sergio Puig, Social Capital in the Arbitration Market, 25 EJIL 387 (2014). This text was accompanied by a small review symposium on EJIL: Talk! (https://www.ejiltalk.org/discussion-of-sergio-puigs-social-capital-in-the-arbitration-market/, last accessed 23 April 2017).Google Scholar

10 See Towfigh, Emanuel V., Komplexität und Normenklarheit — oder: Gesetze sind für Juristen gemacht, 48 Der Staat 29 (2009).Google Scholar

11 In this instance “normative” is used in the sense prevailing in continental European legal scholarship (following the somewhat descriptive Latin undertone), rather than in the sense U.S. lawyers tend to use it, referring to value judgments (in line with the ubiquitous English meaning).Google Scholar

12 See Petersen, Niels, Avoiding the Common Wisdom Fallacy: The Role of Social Sciences in Constitutional Adjudication, 11 International Journal of Constitutional law 294 (2013); Emanuel Towfigh, Empirical Arguments in Public Law Doctrine, 12 International Journal of Constitutional Law 670 (2014).Google Scholar

13 Jacob has undertaken an illuminating discussion of the question. See Jacob, Marc, Precedents and Case-Based Reasoning in the European Court of Justice 219–74 (2014).Google Scholar

14 See Derlén & Lindholm in this issue.Google Scholar

15 See Frankenreiter in this issue.Google Scholar

16 See Petersen, supra note 12. See also Watts, D. J., Everything is obvious (2012); P.F. Lazarsfeld, The American Soldier: An Expository Review, 13 Publ. Opinion Quart. 377, 380 (1949).Google Scholar