Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Supreme Court Precedents

Fowler, James H.; Johnson, Timothy R.; Spriggs II, James F.; Jeon, Sangick; Wahlbeck, Paul J.

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Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Supreme Court Precedents

Political Analysis, 15 (3): 324-346 (July 2007)

49 Pages Posted: 23 Aug 2007

See all articles by James H. Fowler

James H. Fowler

UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences; University of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health

James F. Spriggs II

Washington University in St. Louis - Department of Political Science; Washington University in St. Louis - Center for Empirical Research in the Law

Sangick Jeon

Stanford University - Department of Political Science

Paul J. Wahlbeck

George Washington University

There are 2 versions of this paper

Abstract

We construct the complete network of 28,951 majority opinions written by the U.S. Supreme Court and the cases they cite from 1792 to 2005. We illustrate some basic properties of this network and then describe a method for creating importance scores using the data to identify the most important Court precedents at any point in time. This method yields dynamic rankings that can be used to predict the future citation behavior of state courts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and these rankings outperform several commonly used alternative measures of case importance.

Keywords: Supreme Court, precedent, law, citation analysis, case importance

JEL Classification: K40, K49

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Fowler, James H. and Fowler, James H. and Johnson, Timothy R. and Spriggs, James F. and Jeon, Sangick and Wahlbeck, Paul J., Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Supreme Court Precedents. Political Analysis, 15 (3): 324-346 (July 2007), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1008025