Post DG, Eisen MB "How long is the coastline of the law? Thoughts on the fractal nature of legal systems" Journal of Legal Studies 29(1):545-584, Part 2, January 2000

[Eugene Garfield]

DAVID G. POST : dpost at vm.temple.edu
MICHAEL EISEN : mbeisen at lbl.gov



TITLE :  How long is the coastline of the law? Thoughts on the fractal
nature of legal systems

AUTHOR :  Post DG, Eisen MB
JOURNAL :  JOURNAL OF LEGAL STUDIES  29 (1): 545-584, Part 2 JAN 2000

 Document type: Article  Language: English Cited References: 56   Times
Cited: 1


Abstract:
Although citation to precedent in judicial opinions is a critical component
of the network of rules that comprise "the law'' in any area, there have
been surprisingly few systematic attempts to use the abundant data available
on citation patterns to uncover general principles about the structure of
the legal system. We examine data on the number of times judicial opinions
cite to, and are subsequently cited as, precedent to test the hypothesis
that legal arguments and legal doctrine have a kind of ''fractal''
structure. Our model provides a reasonable fit to the citation data that we
examined. There do appear, however, to be significant sources of variability
in the data that are not explained by our simple predictive framework, and
it is clearly far too early to draw any robust conclusions about the
hypothesis other than that additional work along these lines appears to be
warranted.

KeyWords Plus:
CITATION ANALYSIS, EVOLUTION, FITNESS, COURTS, CHAOS

Addresses:
Post DG, Temple Univ, Sch Law, Philadelphia, PA 19122 USA
Temple Univ, Sch Law, Philadelphia, PA 19122 USA
Stanford Univ, Sch Med, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

Publisher:
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO

IDS Number:
339PD

ISSN:
0047-2530

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