The proposed project illuminates the potential and the limitations of LDA by answering the central research question if and how LDA advances the process of legal knowledge production (with special emphasis on Swiss law). It is situated at the crossroads of legal theory, empirical legal research and data science and is a direct follow-up to the SNSF-project (“An Empirical Approach to Human Rights Interpretation”, PP00P1_170498 / 1; WP 0).Liste The new project is structured as follows: First, the project seeks to identify the practical challenges faced by large-scale empirical legal research (ELR) projects (WP 1). On this basis, second, the project aims at outlining how LDA transforms ELR and advances the process of production of new legal knowledge (WP 2). Third, the project analyzes the implications of data-driven legal knowledge production on doctrinal legal research (DLR) and legal method (WP 3). Fourth, the study seeks to identify areas of Swiss law that could benefit from LDA with a view to designing future interdisciplinary projects (WP 4).
In the knowledge and network society, insights from data have become an essential resource. In large part, legal scholarship is yet to discover the potential of the computational analysis of legal data. “Legal data” refers to textual data contained in legal documents (judgments, contracts, statutes etc.). The project focuses on the contribution of legal data analysis (LDA) to legal scholarship. LDA refers to the application of computational techniques that use natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and other data science methods in order to automatically extract meanings or semantics from legal text corpora. LDA methods can be used for legal text-based predictions, classification, complexity measurement etc.
The project aims to make a pivotal contribution in the endeavor to further align legal scholarship with digitalization. It seeks to impact legal methodology by constructively integrating LDA into doctrinal legal research (DLR)-designs. The central research question addressed by the new project is if and how LDA advances the process of legal knowledge production (with special emphasis on Swiss law). The specific aims of the project are:
• to identify the practical challenges faced by large-scale empirical legal research (ELR) projects (WP 1),
• to outline how LDA transforms ELR and advances the process of production of new legal knowledge (WP 2),
• to assess the implications of data-driven legal knowledge production from a theoretical and legal methodological perspective (WP 3),
• to identify areas of Swiss law that could benefit from LDA with a view to designing further interdisciplinary projects (WP 4).
The project will build on a multi-method approach, combining qualitative methods (literature review, explorative interviews) with quantitative methods (data science). The expected results will include, first, an improved understanding of how the goals of legal scholarship can be advanced by using LDA. Second, the project will generate domain-specific expertise and knowledge on the applicability of selected data science methods to various legal contexts. Third, a dataset (relating to legal interpretation) will be released open access on which LDA methods are tested.
Last updated:04.03.2022
