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Citizen Science for Citizen Access to Law

Curtotti, Michael; Weibel, Wayne; McCreath, Eric; Ceynowa, Nicolas; Frug, Sara; Bruce, Thomas

Description

This papers sits at the intersection of citizen access to law, legal informatics and plain language. The paper reports the results of a joint project of the Cornell University Legal Information Institute and the Australian National University which collected thousands of crowdsourced assessments of the readability of law through the Cornell LII site. The aim of the project is to enhance accuracy in the prediction of the readability of legal sentences. The study requested readers on legislative...[Show more]

dc.contributor.authorCurtotti, Michael
dc.contributor.authorWeibel, Wayne
dc.contributor.authorMcCreath, Eric
dc.contributor.authorCeynowa, Nicolas
dc.contributor.authorFrug, Sara
dc.contributor.authorBruce, Thomas
dc.date.accessioned2018-11-30T01:18:56Z
dc.date.available2018-11-30T01:18:56Z
dc.identifier.issn2372-7152
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/153882
dc.description.abstractThis papers sits at the intersection of citizen access to law, legal informatics and plain language. The paper reports the results of a joint project of the Cornell University Legal Information Institute and the Australian National University which collected thousands of crowdsourced assessments of the readability of law through the Cornell LII site. The aim of the project is to enhance accuracy in the prediction of the readability of legal sentences. The study requested readers on legislative pages of the LII site to rate passages from the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations and other texts for readability and other characteristics. The research provides insight into who uses legal rules and how they do so. The study enables conclusions to be drawn as to the current readability of law and spread of readability among legal rules. The research is intended to enable the creation of a dataset of legal rules labelled by human judges as to readability. Such a dataset, in combination with machine learning, will assist in identifying factors in legal language which impede readability and access for citizens. As far as we are aware, this research is the largest ever study of readability and usability of legal language and the first research which has applied crowdsourcing to such an investigation. The research is an example of the possibilities open for enhancing access to law through engagement of end users in the online legal publishing environment for enhancement of legal accessibility and through collaboration between legal publishers and researchers.
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.publisherCornell Law School
dc.sourceJournal of Open Access to Law (JOAL)
dc.titleCitizen Science for Citizen Access to Law
dc.typeJournal article
local.description.notesImported from ARIES
local.identifier.citationvolume3
dc.date.issued2015
local.identifier.absfor180102 - Access to Justice
local.identifier.absfor180106 - Comparative Law
local.identifier.ariespublicationu4334215xPUB1585
local.type.statusPublished Version
local.contributor.affiliationCurtotti, Michael, College of Engineering and Computer Science, ANU
local.contributor.affiliationWeibel, Wayne, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University
local.contributor.affiliationMcCreath, Eric, College of Engineering and Computer Science, ANU
local.contributor.affiliationCeynowa, Nicolas, Legal Information Institute Cornell University Law School
local.contributor.affiliationFrug, Sara, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University
local.contributor.affiliationBruce, Thomas, Cornell University
local.bibliographicCitation.issue1
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage1
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage64
local.identifier.absseo970108 - Expanding Knowledge in the Information and Computing Sciences
dc.date.updated2018-11-29T08:17:55Z
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access
CollectionsANU Research Publications

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