A model for automated rating of case law

The increasing volumes of case law available in publicly accessible databases cause serious problems if users are not able to filter on the authoritativeness of the decisions. In this paper we present a model by which large numbers of judgments can be rated, (nearly) without any human intervention. For most cases the legal importance of judgments can be derived from data on publication and citation, reflecting the opinion of the legal community. For newly rendered judgments endogenous variables are used, which turn out to be good predictors of authority.

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