Case Law Explorer

The Case Law Explorer software aims to make legal research software more accessible by enabling non-technical legal scholars to apply network analysis to Dutch court decisions. Traditionally, legal education and research require manual reading and analysis of court decisions. However, the software transforms this approach by visualizing legal cases as a network of nodes (cases) and edges (citations), helping users identify patterns, clusters, and significant landmark cases. This innovative tool empowers legal researchers and students to analyze the evolving dynamics of case citations, offering new perspectives on Dutch and European law.

The goal of an optimization project was to enable legal researchers to analyze and visualize large networks of court decisions efficiently. Initially, the software was limited to the exploration of networks of a few hundred nodes, which was sufficient for small datasets such as citations between Dutch Supreme Court decisions. However, extending the analysis to larger networks—such as lower court decisions or European case law—was not feasible due to technical limitations. The project aimed to address these constraints and create a scalable solution capable of handling networks with tens of thousands of nodes.

The impact of this work is transformative for legal research, enabling the identification and visualization of
central decisions in large, complex networks. For example, searches court decisions can yield thousands of decisions, which are now accessible for meaningful exploration. The advancements made in this project pave the way for deeper insights into judicial trends and case interconnections.

This project bridged a critical gap in legal technology by empowering researchers who conduct case law analysis. Despite initial challenges—such as complex setups, memory limitations, and performance bottlenecks—we successfully optimized the software, introducing features like lazy loading, modularized processing, and advanced
visualization techniques.

The target audience includes legal researchers, social scientists, and organizations focusing on case law
analysis. Moving forward, we aim to modularize the software for broader reuse, align it with FAIR principles, and invite collaborations with communities in legal tech and beyond. The next steps, therefore, include creating reusable software packages and further enhancing modularization and sustainability. We invite interested parties to explore the Case Law Explorer and contribute to its development.