Keywords: Jurimetrics, Judicial decisions,Webscraping,Text mining, Predictive modeling
Webpages:
https://josejesus.info Abstract: The increasing availability of online access to judicial decisions coupled with modern
R packages that perform webscraping, text mining, topic modeling and predictive modeling, allow for the application of quantitative methods in the simultaneous analysis of thousands of court judgements. Extraction, manipulation, and analysis of judicial decisions require a variety of tecniques and the use of multiple
R packages, as well as bulding new functions to attain and analyze relevant content. As an example, unsupervised learning, such as topic modeling, has revealed here-to unknown aspects of how courts handle traffic accident cases. Supervised learning, such as classification, is a very important tool to identify determinants of judicial decisions, which are influenced by the interpretation of facts and, suprisingly, by judges’ ideology. It is now possible to predict with a high level of accuracy how courts will decide in criminal cases. The talk will address a set of tecniques that have been developed to analyze court rulings.