Legal Informatics / Legal Communication Papers @ ICA 2012

The following legal informatics or legal communication papers are being presented at ICA 2012: The Conference of the International Communication Association, being held 24-28 May 2012, in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. (Click here for the full conference program. The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #ica12. If you know of other legal communication or legal informatics papers presented at the conference, please feel free to mention them in the comments):

• Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa, U of Tampere: The Effects of Relational Tensions on Optimal Listening in Legal Communication Relationships
• Cheryl Ann Bishop, Quinnipiac U: Access to Information in the European Court of Human Rights
• Laura W. Black and Anna Marie Wiederhold, Ohio U: “I Agree With All of That, But…” Examining Expressions of Difference in Citizen Discussion Groups
• Emily A. Dolan, Syracuse U: Exploring Privacy on Online Social Networks in Civil Cases
• Dmitry Epstein, Cornell U; Rebecca B. Vernon, Cornell eRulemaking Initiative: Not by Technology Alone: The “Analog” Aspects of Online Public Engagement in Rulemaking
• Jessica Fridy and Karen Tracy, U of Colorado: Majority Rule or a Minority Right? Discursive Orientations Toward Democratic Ideals in a U.S. Public Hearing
• Howard Giles, Douglas Bonilla, Daniel Linz, and Michelle L. Gomez,U of California, Santa Barbara: Police Stops of and Interactions With Latino and White (Non-Latino) Drivers: Extensive Policing and Communication Accommodation
• Jeffrey A. Gottfried, U of Pennsylvania, Eran N. Ben-Porath, Social Science Research Solutions, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, U of Pennsylvania: Do Judges Perceive Value in Voter Guides for Judicial Elections?
• Karina Horsti, New York U; Saara Pellander, U of Helsinki: Family in Migration Debates: Polarised Discourses in Finnish Media and Parliament
• Robert Huesca, Trinity U; Roopali Mukherjee, CUNY – Queens College; Eren McGinnis, Dos Vatos Productions: Precious Knowledge: A Film and Discussion
• Shazia Iftkhar, U of Michigan: “The Republic is Lived With the Face Uncovered”: Framing the Legal Ban on the ‘Burqa’ in France
• Oyvind Ihlen and Kjersti Thorbjornsrud, U of Oslo: Tears vs. Rules and Regulations: Media Strategies and Framing of Immigration Issues
• Melissa A. Johnson, North Carolina State U: Battleground Arizona: Visual Fidelity in Network News Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Law
• Michael K Park, U of Southern California: Juror Misconduct 2.0: The Right to an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Networking
• Jennifer M. Proffitt and Margot A. Susca, Florida State U: Follow the Money: The Entertainment Software Association Attack on Video Game Regulation
• Ryan Rogers, U of North Carolina: The Violence of a Generation: Supreme Court Ruling on Regulating Violent Video Games for Minors
• Leah Sprain, Colorado State U: Speaking as “Experts” and “Citizens” in Public Meetings
• T.T. Sreekumar and Shobha Vadrevu, National U of Singapore: “If I Can, I Legislate. If I Can’t, I Gazette”: Political Twitterati and Democracy in Singapore
• Inger Lisbeth Stole, U of Illinois: The 1930s: Consumers Reactions to Advertising and Demands for Federal Regulation
• Chad Tew and Amy Jorgensen, U of Southern Indiana: Accused and Confused: An Analysis of YouTube Reaction Videos to Copyright Violations
• Mercedes Vigon, Florida International U: Not Business as Usual: Spanish–Language TV Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Law, April-May 2010

For full text of papers, please contact the authors.

Mochales and Moens on Argumentation Mining in ECHR Texts

Rachel Mochales Palau and Professor Dr. Marie-Francine Moens, both of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Afdeling Informatica, have published Argumentation Mining, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law. Here is the abstract:

Argumentation mining aims to automatically detect, classify and structure argumentation in text. Therefore, argumentation mining is an important part of a complete argumentation analyisis, i.e. understanding the content of serial arguments, their linguistic structure, the relationship between the preceding and following arguments, recognizing the underlying conceptual beliefs, and understanding within the comprehensive coherence of the specific topic. We present different methods to aid argumentation mining, starting with plain argumentation detection and moving forward to a more structural analysis of the detected argumentation. Different state-of-the-art techniques on machine learning and context free grammars are applied to solve the challenges of argumentation mining. We also highlight fundamental questions found during our research and analyse different issues for future research on argumentation mining.

The techniques discussed in the paper are illustrated in part through their application to a corpus of texts issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Lupu & Voeten on The Role of Precedent at the European Court of Human Rights: A Network Analysis of Case Citations

Yonatan Lupu of the University of California, San Diego Department of Political Science and Professor Erik Voeten of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, have posted The Role of Precedent at the European Court of Human Rights: A Network Analysis of Case Citations. The authors presented the paper at the 2010 Political Networks Conference, held 19-21 May 2010 at the Duke University Department of Political Science in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Here is the abstract of the paper:

While political scientists have become increasingly interested in the output of international courts, they have paid little attention to the manner by which these courts justify their decisions and develop legal norms. We address these issues through a network analysis of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) citations. We argue that, like domestic review courts, the ECtHR uses its legal justifications at least in part to convince “lower” (domestic) courts of the legitimacy of its judgments. Several empirical observations are consistent with this view. First, country-specific factors do not determine the case-law on which the Court relies. Instead, it cites precedent based on the legal issues in the case. Second, the Court is more careful to embed judgments in its existing case law with respect to the more politically sensitive decisions. Third, the court embeds its judgments in case-law more when the respondent government is from a common law legal system where the courts traditionally rely more on similar justifications. In all, we conclude that the ECtHR by and large uses case law to justify its decisions in a way that is similar to domestic review courts. Finally, we highlight the utility of applying network analysis to further study the development of international legal norms.

Thanks to Professor Voeten for the URL of the paper.

Interlaken Conference on the Future of the European Court of Human Rights

[NOTE added on 28 February 2010:

• Click here for the full text of the Interlaken Declaration agreed at the conference.
• Click here for Antoine Buyse's commentary on the declaration.
• Click here for Antoine Buyse's links to the conference page and the special conference site of the Swiss Presidency.
• Click here for links to press coverage of the conference, HT Antoine Buyse.

]

A Conference on the Future of the European Court of Human Rights, among States that are subject to the jurisdiction of that court, will be held February 18-19, 2010, in Interlaken, Switzerland. The purpose of the conference is to enable the Member States to engage in strategic planning for the Court respecting the next decade. According to the official preparatory memorandum, the conference will address two key issues:

• The Court’s large and growing caseload; and
• Problems with enforcement and effect of the Court’s rulings at the Member State level.

The Court identifies the following primary causes for these problems:

• “[M]any applicants are not familiar with either the substantive limits of the Convention or the procedural conditions for admissibility.”
• “The high number of repetitive applications before the Court is an indication that the subsidiarity principle does not operate adequately” (e.g., many Member States allegedly:
• are not providing adequate remedies for human rights violations,
• are permitting individuals to apply to the Court without having exhausted national remedies,
• are failing to enforce the Court’s judgments, or
• are declining to conform their law and practices to Court rulings applicable to other Member States).

To address these problems, the Court proposes several reforms. Of those reform proposals the following involve legal information or communication issues:

• “[S]et up special sections, an applications division …, or another filtering body, … the Court proper ruling only on those cases found admissible”;
• Create a “Human Rights Tribunal [similar to the Court of First Instance of the ECJ] subordinate to the Court” which Tribunal “would deal with admissibility [while] the Court would rule on the merits”;
• Create “a preliminary reference mechanism or possibly an extension of the Court’s advisory competence”;
• Require each State to implement the following corrective measures “at the national level”:
• providing human rights training to its citizens;
• translating the Court’s judgments into the languages of its citizens;
• “execution of national judgments”;
• “solutions for the excessive length of proceedings”; and
• “reopening of proceedings following Strasbourg judgments.”
• Require States to “execute the Court’s judgments promptly”;
• Furnish “human rights training” to the States (see, e.g., the Court’s Warsaw Pilot Project, in which the Court educates potential applicants about the Court’s procedures and substantive human rights law);
• “[E]nsur[e] better dissemination of the Court’s case-law”;
• Authorize “’[c]lass actions’ or collective applications”; and
• Refer “purely repetitive cases to the Committee of Ministers and/or to the States concerned.”

Also of interest to legal informatics researchers is the Court’s description of information- or communication-related steps it has already taken to reduce its caseload or expedite case processing:

• Adding a fifth section (or panel) of judges to the court;
• Deciding on admissibility and the merits at the same time;
• Encouraging settlement;
• Accepting “unilateral declarations of violations”;
• Implementing a “pilot judgment” procedure;
• Simplifying the drafting of judgments;
• Creating “a new order for processing applications based on well-defined criteria”;
• Implementing better data processing tools, and
• “Develop[ing] its Research [and Library] Division.”

For more information on the Interlaken conference and stakeholders’ preparations for it, please see Antoine Buyse’s very informative posts on the ECHR Blog.

Proactive Law in Action: Warsaw Pilot Project Educating Potential Applicants to the ECHR

An interesting example of pro active law — the movement to educate citizens about substantive law and procedure, so that citizens may make informed decisions about the many issues in their lives that have legal consequences — was reported this week in connection with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Antoine Buyse of the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights reports at ECHR Blog that the Council of Europe’s Information Office in Warsaw has begun an effort, named the Warsaw Pilot Project, to educate potential applicants to the ECHR, “about admissibility criteria and more generally about the ECHR.” “Such undertakings,” Buyse contends, “either performed by a specially appointed lawyer or by national human rights institutions, might help to avoid part of the deluge of cases streaming to Strasbourg.”

The Warsaw Pilot Project presents an example of a kind of public legal education effort that could have positive consequences for judicial case administration reform, discussed in recent writings by Judge Dory Reiling and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver, as well as for the proactive law movement.

Buyse reports that participants at last week’s London meeting of NGOs in preparation for the February 18-19, 2010 Interlaken conference on the future of the ECHR cited the Warsaw Pilot Project, as an example of efforts that they will encourage the ECHR to undertake, to increase understanding of “how the [European Convention on Human Rights] system works both among the general public but specifically among practising lawyers.” Buyse reports that the conference participants agreed that “ECHR as a standard part of legal education would be helpful, but also [necessary is] practical dissemination of information on admissibility criteria and other matters within the state parties themselves.”

Empirical study of the Warsaw Pilot Project and similar efforts would be worthwhile projects for legal informatics researchers who study legal information behavior.

For more information on the London NGO meeting, please see Buyse’s fine report.

HT Human Rights in Ireland.