An Analysis of Three Legal Citation Networks Derived from Austrian Supreme Court Decisions

Abstract

In this paper, we present a case study on the structural properties of three citations networks derived from Austrian Supreme Court decisions. In particular, we analyzed 250.984 Supreme Court decisions ranging from 1922 to 2017. As part of our case study, we analyzed the degree distributions, the structural properties of prominent court decisions, as well as changes in the frequency of legal citations over time.