AALS Open Source Program

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Session Type: AALS Open Source Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel

Room: Virginia A

Floor: Lobby Level

In recent years, the digitization of legal texts and developments in data analytics have opened entirely new methodological approaches for law scholars. Digitized texts include traditional legal documents such as judicial opinions, constitutions, and statutes, as well as a broader set of legal documents such as briefs, rulemakings, administrative decisions, and regulatory filings. Computational analysis of legal texts expands methodological boundaries either by using new tools to study longstanding questions or by identifying new questions revealed by developments in data availability and analysis. This type of scholarship is both causal and descriptive; takes diverse textual corpora as objects of study; and applies a wide range of advanced text analysis, machine learning, and related statistical tools. The point of departure for this discussion will be the book Law as Data: Computation, Text, and the Future of Legal Analysis (Michael A. Livermore and Daniel N. Rockmore eds., 2019).