Abstract
How do complex social systems evolve in the modern world? This question lies at the heart of social physics, and network analysis has proven critical in providing answers to it. In recent years, network analysis has also been used to gain a quantitative understanding of law as a complex adaptive system, but most research has focused on legal documents of a single type, and there exists no unified framework for quantitative legal document analysis using network analytical tools. Against this background, we present a comprehensive framework for analyzing legal documents as multi-dimensional, dynamic document networks. We demonstrate the utility of this framework by applying it to an original dataset of statutes and regulations from two different countries, the United States and Germany, spanning more than twenty years (1998–2019). Our framework provides tools for assessing the size and connectivity of the legal system as viewed through the lens of specific document collections as well as for tracking the evolution of individual legal documents over time. Implementing the framework for our dataset, we find that at the federal level, the United States legal system is increasingly dominated by regulations, whereas the German legal system remains governed by statutes. This holds regardless of whether we measure the systems at the macro, the meso, or the micro level.
Highlights
Originating from mathematics and physics, complexity science has been successfully applied in the study of social phenomena [1, 2]
Since the legal system produces a diverse set of outputs, many of which are rich in internal structure, a methodological framework for its dynamic network analysis must allow for many different foci and units of analysis
We explore the evolution of selected chapters of the United States Code (USC) and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and selected German statutes and regulations within their national legal systems in a case study focusing on financial regulation (Section 4.3)
Summary
Originating from mathematics and physics, complexity science has been successfully applied in the study of social phenomena [1, 2]. It was introduced as an approach to gain a quantitative understanding of the structure and evolution of law [3]. While legal scholars have long used concepts and terminology from complexity science in legal theory [4,5,6], research has called for the development of computational models, methods, and metrics to describe how law evolves in practice [7]. We conclude by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of our approach, where we identify avenues for future research. Our exposition uses the basic terminology of graphs and networks; for textbook introductions, see [43,44,45]
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