Visualizing Networks in Law - The New Computational Legal Studies Blog

In what is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating new blawgs to start up in a long while, Dan Katz and Michael Bommarito, two political science PhD students at Michigan, have launched the Computational Legal Studies Blog. Using massive data sets and computational software for analyzing and visualizing networks, the sites features articles, posts, and diagrams tapping into such matters as political contributions to Senators by industry, contributions to Senators from TARP institutions, the flow of judicial clerks within the federal judiciary, and the structure of academic disciplines (including law) based on web clicks on journals. Many of their findings are revealing and surprising. The trajectory of their work and the work of others featured on the site suggests that the theory of legal and political institutions will be tested and refined with these very powerful network analytic tools. Definitely worth a look. JBR