There have been many efforts over the past few decades to use visualization methods and technologies to create graphical representations of the law. These have been undertaken by innovative lawyers in diversity of settings including public and private practice, and in legal academia.

I wrote an article about this topic years ago entitled “Graphics and Visualization: Drawing on All Your Resources”, in the August 25, 1992* edition of the New York Law Journal. (No link is currently available.) Not to paint with too broad a brush here, but things have changed dramatically since then in terms of how and why to create compelling legal visualizations.

Two very interesting projects have recently gotten significant notice online for their ingenuity and the deeper levels of understanding they have facilitated.

First are the legal visualizations of Harry Surden. He is a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law. He teaches, researches and writes about intellectual property law, legal informatics, legal automation and information privacy.

I had the opportunity to hear the professor speak at the Reinvent Law NYC program held in New York in February 2014. This was a memorable one-day event with about 40 speakers who captivated the audience with their presentations about the multitude of ways that technology is dramatically changing the contemporary marketplace for legal services.

On Professor Surden’s blog, he has recently posted the following three data visualization projects he built himself:

• US Code Explorer 1 consisting of a nested tree structure for Title 35 of the US Code covering patents. Clicking on each levels starting with Part I and continuing through V will, in turn, open up to the Chapters, Sections and Subsections. This is an immediately accessible interactive means to unfold Title 35’s structure.
• US Code Explorer 2 Force Directed Graph presents a different form of visualization for Title 17 of the US Code covering Trademarks. It operates as a series of clickable hub-and-spoke formations of the Code’s text whereby clicking on any of the hubs will lead you to the many different sections of Title 17.
• US Constitution Explorer is also presented in a nested tree structure of the Constitution. Clicking on any of the Articles will open the Sections and then the actual text.

Professor Surden’s visualizations are instantly and intuitively navigable as soon as you view them. As a result, you will immediately be drawn into exploring them. For legal professionals and the public alike, he impressively presents these displays in a clear manner that belies the complexities of the underlying laws. I highly recommend clicking through to check out and navigate all of these imaginative visualizations. Furthermore, I hope his work inspires others to experiment with additional forms of visualization of the other federal, state and local codes, laws and regulations.

For a related visualization of the networks of law professors on Twitter, please see the February 5, 2015 Subway Fold post entitled Visualization, Interpretation and Inspiration from Mapping Twitter Networks.

The second new study containing numerous graphics and charts is entitled A Quantitative Analysis of the Writing Style of the U.S. Supreme Court, by Keith Carlson, Michael A. Livermore, and Daniel Rockmore, Dated March 11, 2015. This will be published later in Washington University Law Review 93:6 (2016). The story was reported in the May 4, 2015 edition of The New York Times entitled Justices’ Opinions Grow in Size, Accessibility and Testiness, Study Finds, by Adam Liptak. This article focused upon the three main conclusions stated in the title. I highly recommend click-throughs to read both.

The full-text of the Law Review article contains the very engaging details and methodologies employed. Moreover, it demonstrates the incredible amount of analytical work the authors spent to arrive at their findings. Just as one example, please have a look at the network visualization on Page 29 entitled Figure 5. LANS Graph of Stylistic Similarity Between Justices. It truly brings the author’s efforts to life. I believe this article is a very instructive, well, case where the graphics and text skillfully elevate each other’s effectiveness.

Editor’s Note – reprinted with the permission of the author – first published on his blog – The Subway Fold.