Does Delegation of Drafting Duties to Law Clerks Result in Judgments That Show Lack of Confidence in Terms of Writing Style? A Stylometric Analysis

IF 0.8 Q2 LAW Journal of Law and Courts Pub Date : 2023-04-03 DOI:10.1017/jlc.2023.10
P. Mascini, N. Holvast
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Abstract

Based on an analysis of all administrative court cases published in the Netherlands in 2020 (N = 4,642), we tested the hypothesis that experienced law clerks write judgments with greater confidence than less experienced clerks. A confidently written judgment was defined as being shorter, less standardized, and containing fewer legal references than a less confidently written judgment. In support of this hypothesis, our results showed that law clerks with more experience co-signed judgments that were less standardized and contained fewer legal references. However, contrary to the confidence hypothesis, we established that these judgments were also longer than judgments co-signed by less experienced clerks. Our study contextualizes the concerns expressed in studies on the US Supreme Court about the delegation of drafting duties to inexperienced law clerks. The study challenges the assumption that delegation of drafting duties to law clerks automatically results in judgments with a less confident writing style, due to the clerks’ inexperience. The assumption may hold for the US Supreme Court, where all law clerks are relatively inexperienced. However, the assumption does not hold in jurisdictions in which law clerks can be just as experienced (in terms of years worked in the legal field) as judges. This conclusion suggests that research on the functioning of the US Supreme Court cannot necessarily be generalized to other jurisdictions.
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将起草职责委托给法律助理是否会导致对写作风格缺乏信心的判决?文体计量学分析
基于对2020年荷兰公布的所有行政法院案件的分析(N=4642),我们检验了一个假设,即经验丰富的律师比经验不足的律师更有信心地撰写判决。自信的书面判决被定义为比不那么自信的书面裁决更短、标准化程度更低、包含的法律参考更少。为了支持这一假设,我们的研究结果表明,经验丰富的律师共同签署的判决不太规范,法律参考文献也较少。然而,与置信度假设相反,我们确定这些判决也比经验不足的职员共同签署的判决更长。我们的研究结合了美国最高法院研究中对将起草职责委托给缺乏经验的法律办事员表示的担忧。这项研究挑战了这样一种假设,即由于书记员缺乏经验,将起草职责委托给书记员会自动导致判断的写作风格不那么自信。这一假设可能适用于美国最高法院,因为那里的所有法律办事员都相对缺乏经验。然而,这一假设并不适用于书记员与法官一样经验丰富(就法律领域的工作年限而言)的司法管辖区。这一结论表明,对美国最高法院运作的研究不一定能推广到其他司法管辖区。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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CiteScore
2.00
自引率
0.00%
发文量
16
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