Possible Use of Citation Analysis in the Czech Republic
Vol.7,No.13(2016)
This paper is the first output of long-term research on theoretical and practical possibility of citation analysis of the case law in the Czech Republic. Development of such an analysis is the first step in the creation of practical tools that can accurately map relationships between specific decisions and thus evaluate their importance. In the first part of the paper a general summary of current findings in the area, a recherché of relevant doctrinal sources and brief evaluation of the applicability of citation analysis in the Czech environment is offered.
In the second part of the paper the current status quo of the case law publication practice in the Czech Republic is summed up. Firstly, publicly accessible databases of the supreme courts (Supreme Court, Supreme Administrative Court, and Constitutional Court) are reviewed. The possibilities which these database systems offer are examined, e.g. whether and how the relationships between different decisions by their metadata are specified. A similar approach is consequently applied to the three private legal information systems - ASPI, Beck-online, and CODEXIS.
In the third part of the paper primary difficulties that stand in the way of conducting the complex citation analysis which would meet the requirements of usability are summed up. The first step consisting in an attempt to capture citations of decisions in the sample of 46 decisions of the Constitutional Court by a regular expression is described. At the end of the paper, results are evaluated, and further approach of the research of the possibility of case law citation analysis is described.
Citation Analysis; Case Citations; Legal Information Systems
s. 147–189
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Copyright © 2016 Matěj Myška, Jakub Harašta, Pavel Loutocký, Jakub Míšek