This site provides resources on Legal Network Analysis (LNA), which refers to the application of network analysis to a legal context, which can concern legislation, case law, networks of criminals, patents, networks of lawyers etc.
A textbook on legal network analysis can be found HERE.
An overview of publications on legal network analysis can be found HERE. Contact law-techlab@maastrichtuniversity.nl if you would like to add publications to the overview.
- Network Analysis and the Law
Presentation on the goals of network analysis. By Johan Lindholm. Legal Network Analysis Workshop, 2 February 2023.
You can extract nodes and edges lists for selected datasets with the following extractors:
- European Court of European Union (ECtHR)
- Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
- Case Law in the Netherlands
- Case Law Explorer - Network analysis software for Dutch case law (European cases to be added). Developed by the Maastricht Law and Tech Lab and the Brightlands Institute for Smart Society. License: Apache 2.0 license.
- Tessuto Normativo Italiano - Network analysis software for Italian legislation.
- Gephi - General-purpose network analysis software. License: CDDL 1.0 and GNU General Public License v3.
- Cytoscape - General-purpose network analysis software. License: GNU LGPL.
- NetworkX - Python module. License: 3-clause BSD license.
- NetworKit - Python module. License: MIT.
- igraph - R / Python module. License: GPL-2.0 license.
- graph-tool - Python module. License: LGPLv3 license.
- Pajek - General-purpose network analysis software. License: Free for non-commercial use.
Periodically, workshops will be organized where speakers and discussants will focus on selected topics, ranging from the purposes of LNA to community detection to centrality measures. The workshops are held online, although some might be organized in person or hybrid. They are, depending on the topic, intended for those who are interested in getting an introduction to LNA as well as for those who have experience in applying LNA. Joining is free of charge.
Click HEREto sign up and receive more information about the workshops.
Feel free to contact law-techlab@maastrichtuniversity.nl for questions, comments, or suggestions (including resources to include on the website).