Abstract
This paper aims to contribute to the goal of finding influential legal precedents by quantitative methods. A lot of work has been made in this direction worldwide, especially in the context of common law jurisdictions. However, this type of work is extremely scarce in the Brazilian literature. In addition, our work also contributes to the research of network analysis and the law by applying these methods to unprecedented amount of data and narrowing our inquiry to a single law area, corporate law. Furthermore, whereas most of the literature applying network analysis to judicial decisions had access to readily available data on the citations to precedent within each ruling, our raw data was nothing but the full text of decisions. We focus on data produced by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), the highest court in Brazil for matters of federal law, including statutory interpretation of civil, criminal and corporate law. The Court issued an astonishing 282040 opinions tagged as related to corporate law between 2008 and 2018. This amount of cases is unparalleled internationally for superior courts and for studies in network analysis and law. In our results, we rank precedents quantitatively based on the citations they receive and make. We also qualitatively analyze some of the results, especially related to groups identified in the network with the Modularity algorithm. Our findings also reveal that corporate law jurisprudence in the STJ is quantitatively dominated by a few legal issues around one single theme that is only tangentially related to corporate law. That is, a type of contract used for the expansion of telephone landlines, which also allowed the consumer to become a shareholder of the telecommunication company. This comparison is especially pertinent because the utter lack of data on the quantitative weight of STJ precedents means the national literature has been operating in a void of objective measurements, one which has been filled with cherry-picked rulings and subjective ranking criteria.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
While STF has 11 sitting justices, including its president which deals with a reduced caseload, STJ has 33 sitting justices.
The roles of Chief Justice, Vice Chief Justice and Corregedor Nacional de Justiça are periodically elected by the Court, and do not serve on any of the panels. They only take part in judgments in the Grand Chamber and in the Plenary, which decides exclusively on administrative matters.
The list included Governors and judges from State and District Courts. The full list is established by article 105, I, a of the Federal Constitution.
Their method is informed by legal caveats to distinguish citations. One such example is considering when an opinion could be cited while having precedential or merely persuasive effect.
One caveat when studying Corporate Law cases from judiciary data is that many cases from corporations in Brazil are decided by Arbitration. Thus, it is possible that our data does not contain some commonly litigated issues.
This might not be in accordance with the most common definitions of Corporate Law, however our goal was to preserve the classification tree used by the Court, especially on higher levels which we believe to be more reliable.
This phenomenon is described in Sect. 4.2
Both averages of the whole network are, by definition, equal. Each citation is represented by an edge, which adds one to the total In Degree of the cited node and one to the Out Degree of the citing node. One way to compute both is to simply divide the total number of edges by the number of nodes.
The algorithm we used is made for undirected graphs. Therefore, it is not a perfect representation of the network, but we believe simply treating the graph as undirected provides a close representation of the cluster of cases in the graph. We opt for using Modularity due to it simplicity and it being widely implemented as network analysis tools.
An admission rule was created over the relevance and impact of the legal issue presented in 2007. However, even after the changes to the Code of Civil Procedure in 2015 admission decisions can still be appealed and receive a decision from STJ or STF.
Authority, PageRank, and Hub are normalised so the sum of the value of all nodes on the network equals 1.
Sumula 371, which appears in Table 3 is a rule over the same issue.
This was the case for all first decisions, except in AG 964292 and REsp 872710. In the remaining cases a collegiate decision might have been issued as part of an internal appeal, but in none of these cases the initial decision was overruled.
This is especially true for the cost of litigation, both in terms of judicial fees and of a lawyer not being required in certain cases.
References
Berman DH, Hafner CD (1995) Understanding precedents in a temporal context of evolving legal doctrine. In: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, ICAIL ’95, pp 42–51, https://doi.org/10.1145/222092.222116,
Bird RC, Smythe DJ (2008) The structure of american legal institutions and the diffusion of wrongful-discharge laws, 1978–1999. Law Soc Rev 42(4):833–864. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2008.00360.x
Black RC, Spriggs JF (2013) The Citation and Depreciation of U.S. Supreme Court Precedent. J Emp Legal Stud 10(2):325–358, https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12012,
Bommarito MJ, Katz DM, Zelner JL, Fowler JH (2010) Distance measures for dynamic citation networks. Physica A 389(19):4201–4208
Boulet R, Mazzega P, Bourcier D (2010) Network Analysis of the French Environmental Code. In: Casanovas P, Pagallo U, Sartor G, Ajani G (eds) AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems. Complex Systems, the Semantic Web, Ontologies, Argumentation, and Dialogue, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp 39–53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16524-5_4
Brin S, Page L (1998) The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. Comp Net ISDN Syst 30(1–7):107–117
Bundesgerichtshof (2020a) Übersicht über den geschäftsgang bei den strafsenaten des bundesgerichtshofes im jahre 2019. Tech. rep., Bundesgerichtshof, https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Service/StatistikZivil/jahresstatistikZivilsenate2019.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3
Bundesgerichtshof (2020b) Übersicht über den geschäftsgang bei den strafsenaten des bundesgerichtshofes im jahre 2019. Tech. rep., Bundesgerichtshof, https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Service/StatistikStraf/jahresstatistikStrafsenate2019.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4
Caldeira GA (1988) Legal precedent: structures of communication between state supreme courts. Soc Net 10(1):29–55
Chang SB, Lai KK, Chang SM (2009) Exploring technology diffusion and classification of business methods: using the patent citation network. Technol Forecast Soc Chang 76(1):107–117
Coiro AL (2012) Aos ministros, tudo? Uma análise da aplicação dos requisitos constitucionais na elaboração de súmulas vinculantes. Revista de Direito do Estado 24:159–201
Comission E (2019) The 2019 EU Justice Scoreboard. Tech. rep., European Comission, Luxembourg, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2838/457497
Correia FA, Nunes JL, de Almeida GFCF, Almeida AAA, Lopes H (2019) An Exploratory Analysis of Precedent Relevance in the Brazilian Supreme Court Rulings. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Document Engineering 2019, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, DocEng ’19, pp 1–4, https://doi.org/10.1145/3342558.3345416
Courts US (2017) Federal judicial caseload statistics. Tech. rep., United States Courts, https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/federal-judicial-caseload-statistics-2016
Da Ros L (2015) O custo da Justiça no Brasil: uma anãlise comparativa exploratória. newsletter. Tech. Rep. 2, n. 9, Observatório de elites políticas e sociais do brasil, http://observatory-elites.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/newsletter-Observatorio-v.-2-n.-9.pdf
Derlén M, Lindholm J (2014) Goodbye van Gend en Loos, Hello Bosman? using network analysis to measure the importance of individual CJEU judgments. European Law J 20(5):667–687. https://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12077
Fowler JH, Jeon S (2008) The authority of supreme court precedent. Soc Net 30(1):16–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2007.05.001
Fowler JH, Johnson TR, Spriggs JF, Jeon S, Wahlbeck PJ (2007) Network analysis and the law: Measuring the legal importance of precedents at the u.s. supreme court. Political Analysis 15(3):324–346
Gomez-Nieto E, Casaca W, Hartmann I, Nonato LG (2015) Understanding Large Legal Datasets through Visual Analytics. In: SIBGRAPI 2015 - Conference on Graphics, Patterns and Images, p 4
Green A, Yoon AH (2017) Triaging the law: developing the common law on the supreme court of India. J Emp Legal Stud 14(4):683–715. https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12161
de Justiça ST (2020) Relatório estatístico. Tech. rep, Superior Tribunal de Justiça
Kleinberg JM (1999) Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment. J ACM 46(5):604–632. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2008.00360.x0
Koniaris M, Anagnostopoulos I, Vassiliou Y (2018) Network analysis in the legal domain: a complex model for European Union legal sources. J Comp Net 6(2):243–268
Landes W, Lessig L, Solimine M (1998) Judicial influence: a citation analysis of federal courts of appeals judges. J Legal Stud 27(2):271–332. https://doi.org/10.1086/468022
Leibon G, Livermore M, Harder R, Riddell A, Rockmore D (2018) Bending the law: geometric tools for quantifying influence in the multinetwork of legal opinions. Artif Intell Law 26(2):145–167. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-018-9224-2
Leicht EA, Newman MEJ (2008) Community structure in directed networks. Phys Rev Lett 100(11):118703. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.118703
Lupu Y, Voeten E (2012) Precedent in international courts: a network analysis of case citations by the European court of human rights. Br J Polit Sci 42(2):413–439
Mazzega P, Bourcier D, Boulet R (2009) The network of French legal codes. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Association for Computing Machinery, Barcelona, Spain, ICAIL ’09, pp 236–237, https://doi.org/10.1145/1568234.1568271
Newman MEJ (2004) Coauthorship networks and patterns of scientific collaboration. Proc Nat Acad Sci 101(suppl 1):5200–5205
Newman MEJ (2006) Modularity and community structure in networks. Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 103(23):8577–8582
van Opijnen M (2013) A model for automated rating of case law. In: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Association for Computing Machinery, Rome, Italy, ICAIL ’13, pp 140–149, https://doi.org/10.1145/2514601.2514617
Opijnen Mv (2012) Citation Analysis and Beyond: in Search of Indicators Measuring Case Law Importance. In: JURIX, https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-167-0-95
Pessoa FMG, Peres LCM, Queirós D, Colares E, Stemler I, de Andrade R, Pereira F, Borges D, Barbão J (2019) Justiça em Número. Tech. rep, CONSELHO NACIONAL DE JUSTIÇA, Brasília
Rabina DL, Sula C (2015) Visual First amendment: using empirical legal methods and visualization techniques to enhance understanding of supreme court rulings. In: iConference 2015 Proceedings
Rissland EL, Xu X (2011) Catching Gray Cygnets: an initial exploration. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, ICAIL ’11, pp 151–160, https://doi.org/10.1145/2018358.2018381
Robinson R (2010) The relative (un)importance of Rehnquist Court decisions. Politics & Policy 38(5):907–939, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2008.00360.x3
Smith TA (2007) The Web of Law. San Diego Law Review 44(2):309–354, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2008.00360.x4
State Courts NC (2017) Court Statistics Project. Tech. rep., National Center for State Courts, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2008.00360.x5
Stoler J, Roman AS (2016) Where is precedent set? An exploratory geovisualization of State supreme court cases. J of Maps 12(2):334–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2015.1021392
Winkels R, Ruyter J, Kroese H (2011) Determining authority of Dutch case law. Legal Knowled Inform Syst 235:103–112
Wollschlager C (1998) Exploring Global Landscapes of Litigation. Nomos, Baden-Baden
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Guilherme Almeida, Mariana Pargendler and Thomaz Pereira for the careful reading of previous versions of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This study is part of a larger research project named “Corporate Law at the Superior Court of Justice”, coordinated by João Manoel de Lima Jr. and made possible by funding from the Getulio Vargas Foundation. One of the authors is also supported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.
Appendices
Appendices
List of procedural subjects classified as corporate law
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Anônima
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Anônima, Subscrição de Ações
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Dissoluçõo
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Apuraçõo de haveres
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Desconsideraçõo da Personalidade Jurídica
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Pessoas Jurídicas
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Liquidação
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Transferéncia de cotas
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Obrigações, Espécies de Títulos de Crédito, Debêntures
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Limitada
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Responsabilidade dos sócios e administradores
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Mercado de Capitais
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Conta de Participação
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Cooperativa
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Constituição
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Alteração de capital
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Cisão
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Incorporação
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Mercado de Capitais, Bolsa de Valores
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Em comum / De fato
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Ingresso e Exclusção dos Sócios na Sociedade
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Anônima
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Comandita por Ações
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Anônima, Extinção e dissolução
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Obrigações, Espécies de Contratos, Locação de Imóvel, Comercial
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Obrigações, Espécies de Contratos, Locação de Imóvel, Comercial, Ação renovatória
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Obrigações, Espécies de Contratos, Contratos Bancários, Investimento em ações e cotas sociais
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Transformação
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Obrigações, Espécies de Contratos, Locação de Imóvel, Comercial, Rescisão
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Simples
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Coligadas
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Anônima, Direitos dos Sócios
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Fusão
-
DIREITO CIVIL, Empresas, Sociedade, Coligação
-
Empresas
-
Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades
-
Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Anônima
-
Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Anônima, Subscrição de Ações
-
Empresas, Sociedade
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Dissolução
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Desconsideração da Personalidade Jurídica
-
Empresas, Recuperação judicial e Falência, Liquidação
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Liquidação
-
Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Dependente de Autorização
-
Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Cooperativa
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Apuração de haveres
-
Empresas, Mercado de Capitais
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Ingresso e Exclusão dos Sócios na Sociedade
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Transferência de cotas
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Responsabilidade dos sócios e administradores
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Incorporação
-
Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Limitada
-
Empresas, Espécies de Sociedades, Conta de Participação
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Alteração de capital
-
Empresas, Mercado de Capitais, Bolsa de Valores
-
Empresas, Sociedade, Constituição
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nunes, J.L., Hartmann, I.A. A quantitative approach to ranking corporate law precedents in the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice. Artif Intell Law 30, 117–145 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-021-09290-8
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-021-09290-8