Searching for a Reference: Using Automated Text Analysis to Study Judicial Compliance
Vol.12,No.2(2018)
The concept of judicial compliance has attracted plenty of attention in the last two decades. Yet, despite the growing scholarly interest, important research questions remain largely unresolved. This is partly due to the persistent use of unsystematic research, built on the cherry picking of cases. The content of only a few well-known judgments has been thoroughly examined, and the rest remains largely ignored by the legal scholarship. The aim of this article is to introduce a sketch of a new three-level approach for improving research on judicial compliance in a multi-level arena. We show how the use of automated text analysis in combination with more traditional legal methods might shed more light on the concept of judicial compliance and judicial dialogues. We explain the procedure of the automated collection of data and their coding and also point out the risks of using automated text analysis when studying judicial compliance. The approach is demonstrated on a single case study of the use of European Court of Human Rights rulings by Czech apex courts. This study assesses how often and in what way the domestic courts engage with the European Court of Human Rights case law.
Automated Text Analysis; Compliance; European Court Of Human Rights; National Courts; References
p. 131–160
Katarina Šipulová
Judicial Studies Institute Masaryk University
Judicial Studies Institute
Senior Researcher, Mst (OXON), PhD (MUNI)
[1] Aletras, N. et al. (2016) Predicting judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights: A natural language processing perspective. PeerJ Computer Science, 2. Available from: https://peerj.com/articles/cs-93.pdf [Accessed 22 January 2018]. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.93
[2] Alter K. (2014) The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights. Princeton: Princeton UP.
[3] Alter. K. J. (2010) Establishing the Supremacy of European Law: The Making of an International Rule of Law in Europe. Oxford: Oxford UP.
[4] Anagnostou, D. (2014) The European Court of Human Rights. Implementing Strasbourg’s Judgments on Domestic Policy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
[5] Bobek, M. and Kosař, D. (2010) Report on the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In: Giuseppe Martinico and Oreste Pollicino (eds.) The National Judicial Treatment of the ECHR and EU Laws. A Comparative Constitutional Perspective. Groningen: Europa Law Publishing, pp. 117–150.
[6] Bourdieu, P. (1987) The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field. Hastings Law Journal, 38 (5), pp. 814–853.
[7] Creswell, J. W., and Plano Clark, V. L. (2018) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
[8] Dyevre, A. (2015) The Promise and Pitfalls of Automated Text-Scaling Techniques for the Analysis of Judicial Opinions. SSRN. Available from: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2626370 [Accessed 10 February 2018].
[9] Epstein, L., Friedman, B. and Stone, G. R. (2015) Testing the Constitution. New York University Law Review, 90 (4), pp. 1001–1040.
[10] Gerards J. and Fleuren J. (eds., 2014) Implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights and of the Judgments of the ECtHR in National Case-Law: A Comparative Analysis. Antwerp: Intersentia.
[11] Grimmer, J. and Stewart, B. M. (2013) Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts. Political Analysis, 21 (3), pp. 267–297. https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mps028
[12] Harašta, J. and Šavelka, J. (2017) Toward Linking Heterogenous References in Czech Court Decisions to Content. In: Adam Wyner and Giovanni Casini (eds.) Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, pp. 177–182.
[13] Helfer, L. R. and Slaughter, A. M. (1997) Toward a Theory of Effective Supranational Adjudication. Yale Law Journal, 107 (2), pp. 273–391. https://doi.org/10.2307/797259
[14] Hildebrandt, M. (2018) Law as Computation in the Era of Artificial Legal Intelligence: Speaking Law to the Power of Statistics. University of Toronto Law Journal, 68 (supplement 1), pp. 12–35. https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.2017-0044
[15] Hillebrecht C. (2017) Compliance: Actors, Context and Causal Processes. In: Wayne Sandholtz and Christopher Whytock (eds.) Research Handbook on the Politics of International Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 27–54.
[16] Janis, M. W., Kay, R. S. and Bradley, A. W. (2008) European Human Rights Law: Text and Materials. Oxford: Oxford UP, USA.
[17] Katz, D. M., Bommarito II, M. J. and Blackman, J. (2017) A general approach for predicting the behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States. PloS one, 12 (4). Available from: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174698 [Accessed 22 January 2018].
[18] King, G. (2011) Ensuring the Data-Rich Future of the Social Sciences. Science, 331 (6018), pp. 719–721. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197872
[19] Kingsbury B. (1998) The Concept of Compliance as a Function of Competing Conceptions of International Law. Michigan Journal of International Law, 19 (2), pp. 345–372.
[20] Kosař, D. and Lixinski, L. (2015) Domestic Judicial Design by International Human Rights Courts. American Journal of International Law, 109 (4), pp. 713–760. https://doi.org/10.5305/amerjintelaw.109.4.0713
[21] Kosař, D. (2016) Perils of Judicial Self-Government in Transitional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[22] Kosař, D. and Šipulová, K. (2018). The Strasbourg Court Meets Abusive Constitutionalism: Baka v. Hungary and the Rule of Law. Hague Journal on Rule of Law, 10, pp. 83–110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-017-0065-y
[23] Lupu, Y. and Voeten, E. (2012) Precedent in International Courts: A Network Analysis of Case Citations by the European Court of Human Rights. British Journal of Political Science, 42 (2), pp. 413–439. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123411000433
[25] Moravcsik, A. (2000) The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe. International Organization, 54 (2), pp. 217–252. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081800551163
[26] Nollkaemper, A. (2012) The Role of National Courts in Inducing Compliance with International and European Law – A Comparison. In: Marise Cremona (ed.) Compliance and the enforcement of EU law. Oxford: Oxford UP.
[27] Pasquale, F. and Cashwell, G. (2018) Prediction, Persuasion, and the Jurisprudence of Behaviourism. University of Toronto Law Journal, 68 (supplement 1), pp. 63–81. https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.2017-0056
[28] Roberts A. (2011) Comparative International Law? The Role of National Courts in Creating and Enforcing International Law. The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 60 (1), pp. 57–92.
[29] Romano, C. (1999) The Proliferation of International Judicial Bodies: The Pieces of the Puzzle. New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 31 (4), pp. 709–751.
[30] Romano, C., Alter, K. and Shany, Y. (2014) Mapping International Adjudicative Bodies, the Issues, and Players. In: Cesare Romano, Karen Alter, and Yuval Shany (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication. Oxford: OUP, pp. 1–26.
[31] Rytter, J. E. and Wind, M. (2011) In need of juristocracy? The silence of Denmark in the development of European legal norms. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 9 (2), pp. 470–504. https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/mor039
[32] Scheeck, L. (2007) Competition, Conflict and Cooperation between European Courts and the Diplomacy of Supranational Judicial Networks, GARNET Working Paper 2307. Available from: http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/06_wish_paper_laurent_scheeck.pdf [Accessed 1 March 2018].
[33] Stone Sweet, A. and Brunell, T. (2013) Trustee Courts and the Judicialization of International Regimes: The Politics of Majoritarian Activism in the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization. Journal of Law and Courts, (1) 1, pp. 61–88. https://doi.org/10.1086/668499
[34] Wind, M. (2016) Do Scandinavians Care about International Law? A Study of Scandinavian Judges’ Citation Practice to International Law and Courts. Nordic Journal of International Law, 85 (4), pp. 281–302. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718107-08504010
Copyright © 2018 Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology