Sentiment analysis of Canadian maritime case law: a sentiment case law and deep learning approach

Abstract

Historical information in the Canadian Maritime Judiciary increases with time because of the need to archive data to be utilized in case references and for later application when determining verdicts for similar cases. However, such data are typically stored in multiple systems, making its reachability technical. Utilizing technologies like deep learning and sentiment analysis provides chances to facilitate faster access to court records. Such practice enhances impartial verdicts, minimizing workloads for court employees, and decreases the time used in legal proceedings for claims during maritime contracts such as shipping disputes between parties. This paper seeks to develop a sentiment analysis framework that uses deep learning, distributed learning, and machine learning to improve access to statutes, laws, and cases used by maritime judges in making judgments to back their claims. The suggested approach uses deep learning models, including convolutional neural networks (CNNs), deep neural networks, long short-term memory (LSTM), and recurrent neural networks. It extracts court records having crucial sentiments or statements for maritime court verdicts. The suggested approach has been used successfully during sentiment analysis by emphasizing feature selection from a legal repository. The LSTM + CNN model has shown promising results in obtaining sentiments and records from multiple devices and sufficiently proposing practical guidance to judicial personnel regarding the regulations applicable to various situations.