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Cited by 55Artificial Intelligence in LawLegal and Constitutional StudiesComputational and Text Analysis Methods

Complex societies and the growth of the law

Open access
Katz, Daniel Martin, Coupette, Corinna, Beckedorf, Janis, Hartung, Dirk·2020·Scientific Reports
DOI 10.1038/s41598-020-73623-xPMC PMC7599339
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Abstract

While many informal factors influence how people interact, modern societies rely upon law as a primary mechanism to formally control human behaviour. How legal rules impact societal development depends on the interplay between two types of actors: the people who create the rules and the people to which the rules potentially apply. We hypothesise that an increasingly diverse and interconnected society might create increasingly diverse and interconnected rules, and assert that legal networks provide a useful lens through which to observe the interaction between law and society. To evaluate these propositions, we present a novel and generalizable model of statutory materials as multidimensional, time-evolving document networks. Applying this model to the federal legislation of the United States and Germany, we find impressive expansion in the size and complexity of laws over the past two and a half decades. We investigate the sources of this development using methods from network science and natural language processing. To allow for cross-country comparisons over time, based on the explicit cross-references between legal rules, we algorithmically reorganise the legislative materials of the United States and Germany into cluster families that reflect legal topics. This reorganisation reveals that the main driver behind the growth of the law in both jurisdictions is the expansion of the welfare state, backed by an expansion of the tax state. Hence, our findings highlight the power of document network analysis for understanding the evolution of law and its relationship with society.

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  • The complexity of the law imposes real consequences for many individuals and organizations.

    “The complexity of the law [12–15] imposes real consequences for many individuals and organizations [16,17].”

    From GPT-4 passes the bar exam (2024) · cites this paper as [15]

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  1. [3]Tuma NB Social Dynamics Models and Methods 1984 Amsterdam Elsevier
  2. [9]Epstein L Martin AD An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research 2014 Oxford Oxford University Press
  3. [12]Livermore, M. A. & Rockmore, D. N. Law as Data: Computation, Text, & the Future of Legal Analysis (Santa Fe Institute Press, Santa Fe, 2019).
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Authors
Katz, D. M., Coupette, C., Beckedorf, J., & Hartung, D.
Affiliations
  • Illinois Institute of Technology (US)
  • Max Planck Institute for Informatics (DE)
  • Heidelberg University (DE)
  • Bucerius Law School (DE)
Corresponding author
Katz, Daniel Martin
ORCID
Venue
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2020-10-30
Volume
10
Issue
1
Pages
18737-18737
ISSN
2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s41598-020-73623-x
PMC
PMC7599339
OpenAlex
W3025095288
Cited by
55
References
29
Citations by year
2026: 10 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7
FWCI
21.58
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Funders
Bucerius Law School Interdisciplinary Legal Research Programé
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Artificial Intelligence in Law
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Legal and Constitutional Studies
  • Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
Keywords
legal networks, document networks, legislative text analysis, welfare state expansion, law and society

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