Network science meets legal analysis

Imagine a glowing web: dots for key rulings or statutes, lines showing who cites whom, revealing the real power players and natural groupings in law. It’s the lawyer’s gut feel, sharpened by data’s clear view.

That’s the heart of Legal Network Analysis, the new open textbook from Gustavo Arosemena, Gijs van Dijck, and Roland Moerland at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Law and Law & Tech Lab. Funded by the university library’s OpenUP grant, it shows law students simple ways to map these links using network science. No need to twist law into something it’s not, like a lab experiment on human behaviour.

Gustavo, who came to Maastricht for his PhD after studying law in Ecuador and a master’s in Texas and Utrecht, sees law as logical puzzles about rules and relationships. He stumbled into stats and coding later in his career, but it clicked fast. “I always treated law like logic,” he says. “Programming isn’t so different. It’s just tools like Python or R to handle your own data, without needing to be a computer whiz.”

The challenge in legal education

Legal education is in a tough spot, he explains. Lawyers do vital, real-world work. Think top advisors for big firms. But universities push them to ape social sciences, chasing causes over connections. “Even sharp researchers blank on ‘methods’ sections,” Gustavo notes. Why? Law thrives on implications, not just effects. Tools like network analysis or clustering give lawyers effective ways to back up their thinking with numbers. Using basic averages, not scary maths.

Think of law as “botany, not physics,” Gustavo says, borrowing from philosopher Thomas Reid. It’s a landscape of clusters. Solid rules at the centre, fuzzy edges shifting over time. Not one grand theory. Students can start small: grab 20 cases, spot the most cited ones or group similar issues, and test hunches with real metrics.

The power of open access

Open access seals the deal. “Science has no secrets,” Gustavo stresses. Share datasets and code, let others check your work, fix errors fast, and build together. “Dare to try open resources. You’ll contribute more than chasing prestige,” he tells fellow academics.

Published as an open textbook by Maastricht University Press, Legal Network Analysis is freely available for anyone to read, reuse, and explore: https://doi.org/10.26481/mup.2606

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