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The Courts Wikipedia

Study Finds Wikipedia Influences Judicial Behavior (mit.edu) 50

Posted by BeauHD from the internet's-major-resources dept.
A new study attempts to measure how knowledge gleaned from Wikipedia may play out in one specific realm: the courts. MIT News reports: A team of researchers led by Neil Thompson, a research scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), recently came up with a friendly experiment: creating new legal Wikipedia articles to examine how they affect the legal decisions of judges. They set off by developing over 150 new Wikipedia articles on Irish Supreme Court decisions, written by law students. Half of these were randomly chosen to be uploaded online, where they could be used by judges, clerks, lawyers, and so on -- the "treatment" group. The other half were kept offline, and this second group of cases provided the counterfactual basis of what would happen to a case absent a Wikipedia article about it (the "control"). They then looked at two measures: whether the cases were more likely to be cited as precedents by subsequent judicial decisions, and whether the argumentation in court judgments echoed the linguistic content of the new Wikipedia pages.

It turned out the published articles tipped the scales: Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case's citations by more than 20 percent. The increase was statistically significant, and the effect was particularly strong for cases that supported the argument the citing judge was making in their decision (but not the converse). Unsurprisingly, the increase was bigger for citations by lower courts -- the High Court -- and mostly absent for citations by appellate courts -- the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. The researchers suspect this is showing that Wikipedia is used more by judges or clerks who have a heavier workload, for whom the convenience of Wikipedia offers a greater attraction. "To our knowledge, this is the first randomized field experiment that investigates the influence of legal sources on judicial behavior. And because randomized experiments are the gold standard for this type of research, we know the effect we are seeing is causation, not just correlation," says Thompson, the lead author of the study. "The fact that we wrote up all these cases, but the only ones that ended up on Wikipedia were those that won the proverbial 'coin flip,' allows us to show that Wikipedia is influencing both what judges cite and how they write up their decisions."

"Our results also highlight an important public policy issue," Thompson adds. "With a source that is as widely used as Wikipedia, we want to make sure we are building institutions to ensure that the information is of the highest quality. The finding that judges or their staffs are using Wikipedia is a much bigger worry if the information they find there isn't reliable."

The paper describing the study has been published in " The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence."
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Study Finds Wikipedia Influences Judicial Behavior More

Study Finds Wikipedia Influences Judicial Behavior

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  • truly horrifying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Friday July 29, 2022 @09:38PM (#62746172) Homepage Journal
    I don't know which is worse; that judges don't understand how easily Wikipedia can be manipulated, or that the outcome of a case can depend on what someone wrote on the internet, as long as it's referenced.

    • This is why I never, ever cite anything from Wikipedia: I have no idea whether it's accurate or not, and what I'm citing is what a herd of other people have decided needs to be said, not what's relevant or useful.

      In this case I think the problem could be addressed at least in part with a law school topic "Why Wikipedia should never be used as a primary reference for anything ever [youtube.com]".

      • This is why I never, ever cite anything from Wikipedia

        You should never cite any encyclopedia. You should only cite primary sources.

        I have no idea whether it's accurate or not

        1. Go to the bottom of the wiki page to the list of links to primary sources.

        2. Click on the links and read them.

        • Sometimes I find a sort of shell corporation game going on. One unverified article built on the back of the other, until people stop digging.

          • This is why I dig when it matters.

            Math stuff of the sort I look up often (table of fourier or laplace transforms, for example) is easy enough to verify numerically or with pencil and paper.

            Algorithms either work on test cases or they don't.

            Physical constants are either right or they're wrong. They don't get buried that deep in the links.

        • Haha, that's brilliant. When it comes to politically sensitive topics or people, the links often point to politically-leaning media that merely present opinions of reporters. "So-and-so is the world's leading expert..." ref: BBC. Try changing that to "according to the BBC, So-and-so is the world's leading expert..." and it will promptly be changed back, because BBC is an "authoritative source."

    • Re:truly horrifying (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Saturday July 30, 2022 @04:29AM (#62746516)

      They didn't necessarily take what was written about the case on Wikipedia at face value. It may simply have served as a way for them to get to know about its existence. That said, I agree it's troubling that Wikipedia presence apparently influences the likelihood of a case getting cited.

      • I find it no less troubling than people relying on Facebook for their daily news feed. GroupThink has to stop at home before we can expect our courts to rise above it. Its a systemic illness.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Halo1 ( 136547 )

          Facebook analyses what you like (click on) and serves you more and more of the same, indeed locking you into a mini-universe of like-minded people and messaging. I don't think that is comparable to (presumably) using a search engine to look for case law related to a particular issue and ending up on a Wikipedia page.

          • The algorithm is designed to feed you content that keeps you triggered/engaged. Not guaranteed to be an echo chamber. But news media itself feeds you content that supports their view and downplays opposing views. Whether that is FoxNews, Washington Post, NY Post, or NY Times, depends on what they outcome they want you to draw. The experiment did the same by only providing information via Wiki for the outcome they wanted. If there were proposed bills that could in some way harm Facebook, where do you suppose

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          I find it no less troubling than people relying on Facebook for their daily news feed. GroupThink has to stop at home before we can expect our courts to rise above it. Its a systemic illness.

          No, people getting their "news" from Facebook is far less troubling their judges getting their citations from Wikipedia.

          First, the job of the judge is to make a decision based on available evidence in the case as well as appropriate precedent set by previous cases. Sure a judge can use Wikipedia but they should be using

      • Is it any less troubling than news reports in credible outlets that draw attention to a particular set of cases or consult a select set of private citizens (usually a few law professors or prominent attorneys) to build a public case for something while a real case is working its way through the courts?

        It can get pretty wild. There's a consistent theme in places like NYT that the 2nd amendment's protection of the individual right to own a gun didn't exist until 2008 when scotus created it.

        This is certainly a

      • That means at best Wikipedia creates selection bias [sciencedirect.com] in the courts
    • This is just Ireland right? I did read that correctly? The same place that thinks paying significantly more for the same car increases your status in society? Given that backward logic I cannot say that I am surprised. Just one more example of GroupThink if you ask me. We cant expect our judges to avoid it, if we, as a society, constantly embrace GroupThink and Mob Mentality. It has to start with us, as individuals.

      • This is just Ireland right? I did read that correctly?

        Yes.

        The same place that thinks paying significantly more for the same car increases your status in society?

        No.

    • One of Wikipedia's founders, Larry Sanger, has stated that Wikipedia has a strong political bias [nypost.com] and can no longer be trusted.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      Reminds me of a Henry Cecil novel, where a lawyer uses a reference to a law from a non-authoritative source and gets slapped silly by the judge. For all that I'm on the opposite side of the political spectrum to the author, I regard the series to be a good summary of the more basic errors that lawyers and judges make.

    • The real horror is that, today, so much of what happens in legal jurisprudence, though nominally "public" is hidden behind layers of red tape to access. There are very few jurisdictions where you can just go online to get at the text and analysis of legal decisions. Much of the encyclopedia of important case law (and especially its analysis) it is still buried in thick reference books, sitting behind paywalls, or has onerous requirements (like paper access only and only if you go and pay them 25 cents a p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      It is not a problem of manipulation, or "something some guy wrote on the internet". None of the articles tested were manipulative, they have been written in good faith by law students, and it is not surprising that judges would come to the same conclusions, which are mostly citations anyways. Wikipedia seems to influence the choice of words though, to which I don't know if it case for concern, they didn't test if it actually changed the meaning of the ruling. There is not enough material here to conclude th

  • Did they check if the arguing lawyers cited? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29, 2022 @09:43PM (#62746182)

    I don't see anything that says if the cases in question were cited by the arguing lawyers in their briefs... it would be far more useful to know if it was that the cases were getting brought up by the judges/court clerks or if they were in fact being cited by the lawyers arguing the cases. Often what gets cited in an opinion comes from the cases that are cited either in briefs by the parties, or on amicus briefs for the case.

  • Causation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday July 29, 2022 @09:43PM (#62746184) Journal

    "because randomized experiments are the gold standard for this type of research, we know the effect we are seeing is causation, not just correlation,"

    This is an odd philosophical statement on causation.

    • This is an odd philosophical statement on causation.

      Not just odd, but flat-out false.

      • This guy's awkward wording aside, I am trying to figure out a way that this study would not be indicative of causation.

      • How so? If you run a controlled experiment where you intentionally apply randomization, how are you not showing causation?

        Correlations are trivial to measure passively, but if you're injecting an input and measuring the response, what's missing exactly?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      "because randomized experiments are the gold standard for this type of research, we know the effect we are seeing is causation, not just correlation,"

      This is an odd philosophical statement on causation.

      I think a better question is "are judges making bad decisions based on Wikipedia"?

      As this is Ireland, the people who become judges are generally the better lawyers rather than being politically appointed, as it is in most of the world, so they tend to have very good bullshit filters (you pretty much have to in that profession). Whilst the information in Wikipedia can be easily manipulated, most of it isn't and that which is, is pretty freaking obvious.

      I doubt they're using it as a to make decisions on

      • The question I have is more in line with, "Why don't they have a search engine for their cases?" In America we have Lexis Nexis for lawyers.

  • Not a source (Score:3)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Saturday July 30, 2022 @03:27AM (#62746468)

    "With a source that is as widely used as Wikipedia"

    Well there's your problem.

    It's not a source. At most it is an imcomplete list of sources, which themselves have to be verified etc.

  • Convenient, public availability (Score:4)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Saturday July 30, 2022 @04:10AM (#62746500)
    Wikipedia gets used a lot because it's convenient & publicly available. I'm sure laws would get cited as much if they were as easy to access, search & find the relevant information. I remember seeing a study where they found that, unsurprisingly, research papers uploaded to Sci-hub, i.e. conveniently & publicly accessible, were far more likely to be cited than those in journals behind paywalls.

  • Actual topic, minus the clickbait (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Saturday July 30, 2022 @04:28AM (#62746514)

    "Ease of discovery increases citations for upper court cases in lower courts".

    Because that's what OP is actually talking about. By adding wikipedia articles, lower level courts could more easily find cases from higher courts to cite in their arguments and judgements, which resulted in more citations.

    This is not that "wikipedia influences..." It's that "making high court decisions easier to find influences..." Wikipedia is merely one of many potential avenues to make such decisions more discoverable.

  • This is a study of Irish court system.

    It wont happen in USA. We got the best judges money can buy.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      The US has services that provide law. I often use the Cornell Law School's site. There are other pro law sites that paralegals use. Some states have their annotated code online. Sometimes a normal person can understand what they're saying.

      Some judges have been bought, and caught. Let's hope it doesn't become common place like a 3rd world country.

  • ... that Wikipedia was a shit-show of competing interests before this study.

    At least I don't have to worry about lefties breaking into my house to burn my Encyclopedia Britannica.

    Yet.

  • I would have expected the influence to be weaker than that on judicial functionaries. Not because they are particularly different as people from everyone else who uses wikipedia because it's really handy; but because they'd be vastly more likely to have access to one or more of the legal-specific law, case law, and research services (Westlaw, LexisNexis Legal, etc.) that the general public almost certainly wouldn't(outside, perhaps, of a trip down to a fairly well-resourced library with institutional access

  • A previous study from 2016 in France quantified the influence of television on jury decisions. Jury trials taken the day after a major channel aired horrible crimes lead to more severe penalties, and trials after a story on unjust decisions lead to more clement decisions. When the trial was by judge instead of jury, the effect of TV was not apparent.

    (In French) http://www.ipp.eu/wp-content/u... [www.ipp.eu]

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