Jusletter IT

Comparison of Law Texts

An Analysis of German and Austrian Law Texts Regarding Linguistic and Structural Metrics

  • Autoren/Autorinnen: Bernhard Waltl / Florian Matthes
  • Kategorie: Beiträge
  • Region: Deutschland
  • Rechtsgebiete: Juristische Informatik-Systeme und Anwendungen
  • Sammlung: Tagungsband IRIS 2015, Peer Reviewed – Jury LexisNexis Best Paper Award des IRIS2015
  • Zitiervorschlag: Bernhard Waltl / Florian Matthes, Comparison of Law Texts, in: Jusletter IT 26. Februar 2015
Understanding legal texts is a non-trivial task. This has various causes arising from different origins, such as structural or linguistic properties of legal texts. In this article, we extend prior results of structural and linguistic metrics, to deepen the understanding of legal texts’ complexity. Since complexity can be observed on various levels of legal systems and law texts, we restricted ourselves to the complexity of language, including structural and lexical properties. In particular, we focused on the usage of general clauses, indicated by indeterminate legal terms. Thereby, we differentiated and classified indeterminate legal terms regarding their properties. We performed an analysis on a dataset containing 3’553 German laws, respectively regulations. The papers’ result is the extension of an existing complexity indicating set of metrics, including a quantitative, comprehensive and data-intensive analysis in German law texts. Finally, we used the metrics to compare the Austrian and German version of the act governing the liability for a defective product.

Table of contents

  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Complexity, Vagueness and Comparison of Legal Texts
  • 2.1. Complexity Research for Legal Texts
  • 2.2. Vagueness in Legal Texts
  • 2.3. Comparison of Acts
  • 3. Research Approach: Quantitative Analysis and Comparison
  • 3.1. Research Objectives
  • 3.2. An Existing Set of Linguistic Metrics
  • 3.3. Extending the Existing Set of Metrics
  • 3.3.1. Vocabulary Variety
  • 3.3.2. Indeterminacy
  • 3.3.3. Readability
  • 4. Applying Metrics to German Laws
  • 4.1. Vocabulary Variety
  • 4.2. Indeterminate Words
  • 4.3. Readability
  • 5. Law Comparison regarding Metrics: Liability of Defective Products
  • 6. Critical Reflection
  • 7. Conclusion and Outlook
  • 8. Publication bibliography

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