Exploring the Relation between the Indegree Centrality and Authority Score of a Decision and the Reason for which it was Cited: A Case Study

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14220%2F21%3A00122577" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14220/21:00122577 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://journals.muni.cz/mujlt/article/view/14002/12352" target="_blank" >https://journals.muni.cz/mujlt/article/view/14002/12352</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/MUJLT2021-2-4" target="_blank" >10.5817/MUJLT2021-2-4</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Exploring the Relation between the Indegree Centrality and Authority Score of a Decision and the Reason for which it was Cited: A Case Study

Original language description

Some of the recent network citation analyses conducted in continental legal settings have suggested that the most cited decisions tend to be related to procedural issues, or issues of a more general nature. Such decisions are by nature capable of being referred to in a more varied situations, therefore scoring high in indegree centrality or authority score. While it may seem intuitive that decisions with the highest indegree centrality or authority score would settle issues of a more general nature, hence making them more widely applicable to various kinds of subsequent cases, we were wondering, whether this trend would be noticeable in less exposed decisions. To this end, we have conducted a case study within the boundaries of the Czech legal system. We have chosen five decisions containing a chosen keyword based on their indegree centrality in a corpus ofCzech apex courts’ decisions. Subsequently, we haveconstructed eleven chains ofdecisions (connected toone another byacitation)leading tothese five decisions, again paying attention totheir indegree. We theorize that the decisions with higher indegree centrality as well as decisions with higher authority score will be cited in situations seeking a case-law argument for either procedural issue, or an issue of amore general nature, or an issue of principle, while the decisions with low indegree centrality or low authority score will be cited for their substantive law merit. This paper seeks to demonstrate how the network analysis in combination with a qualitative approach may serve as a useful method in further exploring this hypothesis. We show that the actual citation environment inCzech legal setting might be more complex than this hypothesis suggests and that this methodological approach may be further useful in exploring the normative nature of judicial decisions in non-precedential legal settings.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50501 - Law

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology

ISSN

1802-5943

e-ISSN

1802-5951

Volume of the periodical

15

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

22

Pages from-to

225-246

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85117618967