How Wikipedia influences judicial decisions
MU’s international research collaboration on how court decisions may be swayed by Wikipedia articles
Just how routine is our reliance on the ‘knowledge tap’ of Wikipedia was highlighted in a unique research collaboration on the use of the information platform by Irish judges to inform their decisions.
Researchers at Maynooth University, MIT and Cornell University in the US, shone a light into the reliance of the judiciary on Wikipedia articles for both background information and for core legal reasoning, as well as the language they use in their decisions.
Wikipedia articles were 20 per cent more likely to influence the legal reasoning of judges, raising concern about a reliance on the platform, and the possibility of anonymous manipulation.
Researchers at MU developed over 150 new Wikipedia articles on Irish Supreme Court decisions, written by law students, half of which were randomly chosen for uploading to Wikipedia, the other half held offline, to illustrate what would happen to a case with no related Wikipedia article. They then examined whether the cases were more likely to have citations as precedents in subsequent judicial decisions, and whether the argumentation in court judgments echoed the linguistic content of the new Wikipedia pages.
Cases with a Wikipedia article increased citations by more than 20%, and the effect was particularly strong for cases that supported the argument the citing judge was making in their decision. The increase was bigger for citations by lower courts, indicating that Wikipedia is used more frequently by judges or clerks who have a heavier workload.
The Irish legal system proved the perfect testbed, as it shares a key similarity with other national legal systems such as the UK and US. It operates within a hierarchical court structure where decisions of higher courts subsequently bind lower courts. There are relatively few Wikipedia articles on Irish Supreme Court decisions compared to those of the US Supreme Court. Over the course of their project, the researchers increased the number of such articles tenfold.
The team also analysed the language used in the written decision, finding linguistic fingerprints of the Wikipedia articles that they had created.
The research was led at Maynooth University by Dr Brian Flanagan and Dr Edana Richardson, Department of Law, and Dr Brian MacKenzie, Senior Lecturer in Critical Skills.
L-R; Carol Lawless, Chloe Cass, Dr David Doyle, Susan McCarthy, Louise Murray, Comfort Odesola, Rosemary Mangan
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