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Network approach to the French system of legal codes part II: the role of the weights in a network

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Abstract

Unlike usual real graphs which have a low number of edges, we study here a dense network constructed from legal citations. This study is achieved on the simple graph and on the multiple graph associated to this legal network, this allows exploring the behavior of the network structural properties and communities by considering the weighted graph and see which additional information are provided by the weights. We propose new measures to assess the role of the weights in the network structure and to appreciate the weights repartition. Then we compare the communities obtained on the simple graph and on the weighted graph. We also extend to weighted networks the amphitheater-like representation (exposed in a previous work) of this legal network. Finally we evaluate the robustness of our measures and methods thus taking into account potential errors which may occur by getting data or building the network. Our methodology may open new perspectives in the analysis of weighted networks.

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Notes

  1. In French: « Nonobstant les dispositions de l'article L. 413–1 du code minier, les échantillons, documents et renseignements intéressant la recherche, la production ou le régime des eaux souterraines tombent immédiatement dans le domaine public ».

  2. A geodesic is a shortest path between two vertices.

  3. The correspondence between the acronyms and the (translated) names of the codes are given in Appendix Table 11.

  4. Containing the codes of CHA (Housing), DOE (State-owned property), DPF (Public rivers), EUP (Expropriation in public interest), FOR (Forestry), GPP (Property legal person), MIN (Mining), PAT (Estate), PMA (Seaports), URB (Urbanism), VOR (Road system).

  5. Containing the codes of ART (Handicraft), ASF (Social service), ASS (Insurance), CNS (Consumer), EDU (Education), JUA (Administrative court), JUF (Financial court), MUT (Mutual society), REC (Research), ROU (Traffic), SPO (Sport), TOU (Tourism).

  6. It’s not difficult to check that this indeed defines a distance from a mathematical point of view, that is an application verifying the axioms of symmetry, separation and triangular inequality.

  7. Note that to face this problem we used stable (or robust) communities.

  8.  « Il est de loin préférable, en règle générale, de veiller à une juste répartition des textes entre les codes et, au besoin, de recourir à la technique plus simple du renvoi sans citation à un titre, à un chapitre ou à des articles d'un autre code. » in french, paragraph 1.42 of the legistical guide.

  9.  « la codification ne doit pas conduire à un bouleversement permanent de la classification du droit et donc des codes » in french.

  10.  « La codification des textes législatifs et règlementaires constitue un moyen essentiel d'améliorer l'accessibilité et l'intelligibilité du droit. Elle permet une présentation rationalisée, à la fois ordonnée et cohérente, de l'ensemble des dispositions juridiques concernant un secteur. » in french.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Mme Elisabeth Catta, Rapporteure for the Higher Commission for Codification, for her interest in our work and for her helpful comments. This study was funded by the Réseau Thématique de Recherche Avancée (RTRA) Sciences et Techniques de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (www.fondation-stae.net) in Toulouse, France (MAELIA project - http://maelia1.wordpress.com/). Statistical properties of networks have been computed with R and the library igraph (http://www.r-project.org/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ. Lyon, Jean Moulin, iaelyon, Magellan Research Center, 6 Cours Albert Thomas, 69008, Lyon, France

    Romain Boulet

  2. UMR5563 Geosciences Environment Toulouse, CNRS, University of Toulouse, 14 Avenue E. Belin, 31400, Toulouse, France

    Pierre Mazzega

  3. CERSA CNRS, Université de Paris 2, 10 Rue Thénard, 75005, Paris, France

    Danièle Bourcier

Authors
  1. Romain Boulet
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  2. Pierre Mazzega
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  3. Danièle Bourcier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Romain Boulet.

Appendix A

Appendix A

See Table 11.

Table 11 Labels and short name of the 52 French Legal Codes retained in this study
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Boulet, R., Mazzega, P. & Bourcier, D. Network approach to the French system of legal codes part II: the role of the weights in a network. Artif Intell Law 26, 23–47 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-017-9204-y

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