Social Network Analysis and the Law: A Proof of Concept for Argentina

Abstract

Social network analysis (SNA) is a methodology to study complex systems. It has been used for many purposes: from studying the structure of English trade in the East Indies between 1601 and 1833 to the temporal structure of consensus formation in science. While its history goes back to the early twentieth century, its expansion follows the availability of computers as a way of gathering, organizing and transforming the data necessary to construct a “social network”. This paper argues that SNA is a powerful tool for studying legal systems, reviews some of the literature produced so far using it and argues that it can shed relevant insights into important legal questions. It describes the conditions necessary for successful SNA research and discusses possible ways of overcoming challenges in developing countries. It presents four preliminary approaches on Argentina: on the functioning of legislative committees in the House of Representatives, on the patterns of precedent citations in Supreme Court decisions, on the structure of the legal field in the city of Buenos Aires and on the structure of a legal advocacy clique behind a successful public interest litigation campaign.