Quantifying long-term impact of court decisions

TY - JOUR

T1 - Quantifying long-term impact of court decisions

AU - Leitão, Jorge

AU - Lehmann, Sune

AU - Olsen, Henrik Palmer

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - In this work, we investigate how court decisions aggregate citations in the European Court of Human Rights. Using the Bass model, we quantify the prevalence of the rich-get-richer phenomenon. We find that the Bass model provides an excellent description of how individual decisions accumulate citations. Our analysis reveals that citations to a large fraction of decisions are, in fact, explained by the rich-get-richer phenomenon. Based on our statistical model, we argue that network properties are insufficient to explain the rich-get-richer effect, suggesting that intrinsic properties of decisions drive a significant part of the observed citation patterns. We conclude by discussing the legal implications of our findings.

AB - In this work, we investigate how court decisions aggregate citations in the European Court of Human Rights. Using the Bass model, we quantify the prevalence of the rich-get-richer phenomenon. We find that the Bass model provides an excellent description of how individual decisions accumulate citations. Our analysis reveals that citations to a large fraction of decisions are, in fact, explained by the rich-get-richer phenomenon. Based on our statistical model, we argue that network properties are insufficient to explain the rich-get-richer effect, suggesting that intrinsic properties of decisions drive a significant part of the observed citation patterns. We conclude by discussing the legal implications of our findings.

U2 - 10.1007/s41109-018-0110-3

DO - 10.1007/s41109-018-0110-3

M3 - Journal article

SN - 2364-8228

VL - 4

JO - Applied Network Science

JF - Applied Network Science

IS - 3

ER -