Supreme Court Citation Networks
A collaboration between Free Law Project and the University of Baltimore School of Law
With this free tool you can analyze and study lines of Supreme Court cases by creating citation networks. You can quickly access the full text of all the case law in your citation network as well as examine all the associated case data from Supreme Court Database (Spaeth). Citation networks are visualized graphically and underlying data is also presented in sortable tables. You can save your networks, edit and comment upon them, and share them too. You can even embed interactive network visualizations in your website or blog. Learn more by looking below at our gallery of shared networks or by making one yourself.
When the Supreme Court decides cases, it usually hands down an opinion justifying its holding by reference to precedent. Court opinions invoke precedent by citing to prior cases that confronted similar or related questions of law. Over time, as the Court elaborates on legal doctrine, earlier cases become connected to later cases by chains of citation. Lawyers often refer to such chains of related cases as lines of cases. This tool allows users to analyze and study lines of cases by creating citation networks.
Citation networks connect any two Supreme Court cases at three “degrees of separation.” To understand what this means, imagine a line of cases running from Case A to Case Z. If Case Z directly cites Case A, then that constitutes the 1-degree connection in the A-Z network. Now, if Case Z also cites to another case – Case Y – and Case Y in turn cites back to Case A, then Case Y forms a 2-degree connection in the A-Z network (Z->Y->A). Finally, if Case Y cites to yet another case – Case B – and Case B again cites to Case A, then Case B constitutes a 3-degree connection in the A-Z network (Z->Y->B->A). This tool automatically finds and displays all 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections between any two user-specified Supreme Court cases.
In addition to showing the citation relationship between cases, this tool also leverages data about the cases available in the Supreme Court Database (Spaeth). Specifically, the tool visualizes Spaeth data concerning the decision direction of cases (liberal v. conservative) and vote count (9-0, 8-1, etc). Links to the complete text of all opinions and links to the complete Spaeth data for a given case are also provided.
This project was proudly developed hand in hand by Colin Starger at the University of Baltimore School of Law and Free Law Project. We look forward to seeing how it is used and to hearing your feedback.
