A Network Analysis of Judicial Cross-Citations in Europe

Recent years have seen a growing literature on citations between courts from different countries. What explains why such cross-citations occur between some courts but not others? This article addresses this question with original data on 2,967 citations between the private law supreme courts of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Law & social inquiry 2023-08, Vol.48 (3), p.881-905
Main Author: Siems, Mathias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Case law
Citations
Civil law
Courts
Culture
Decision making
Dependency
Judges & magistrates
Language proficiency
Native language
Network analysis
Regression analysis
Supreme courts
Variables
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
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Summary:Recent years have seen a growing literature on citations between courts from different countries. What explains why such cross-citations occur between some courts but not others? This article addresses this question with original data on 2,967 citations between the private law supreme courts of the twenty-eight member states of the European Union. These cross-citations form a valued network of twenty-eight nodes, which can be analyzed with tools of network analysis. The article uses the method of a multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure in order to address the dependency of observations in a network. The explanatory variables distinguish between variables that proxy for legal similarities between countries and other factors, and, thus, this article contributes to the wider debate about the predominance of either legal or nonlegal factors in judicial decision-making. The main finding is that nonlegal factors play a decisive role, notably a common native language and overlapping language skills, while legal families are not found to be a significant determinant.
ISSN:0897-6546
1747-4469
1545-696X
DOI:10.1017/lsi.2022.22