Transparency and strategic promotion: How court press releases facilitate judicial agenda-setting in Germany

Published in , 1900

Abstract
Press releases disseminate selected information and promote particular issues. Although several courts regularly publish press releases on decisions, it is unclear which policy issues are more likely to be promoted by courts. This study argues that courts publish press releases to increase transparency and to promote politically contested issues strategically. Using original data on the German Federal Constitutional Court, it assesses the role of press releases for judicial agenda-setting. Through supervised text classification, policy issues in 7114 court decisions between 1998 and 2019 were coded. The results show that the pool of policy issues covered by press releases is more diverse compared to the Court’s decisions and that they are more likely to be published for decisions that deal with politically contested policy issues. This study contributes to the policy agenda literature by adding a new case, the German Federal Constitutional Court, and court press releases as a new perspective.

Recommended citation: Meyer, Philipp. Transparency and strategic promotion: How court press releases facilitate judicial agenda-setting in Germany.

Discussing case law and promoting the rule of law: reports on bilateral court meetings as a novel data source to assess transjudicial communication

Published in , 1900

Abstract
Judicial diplomacy describes the courts' efforts to promote liberal democracy and protect their institutional authority. Bilateral court meetings are an essential aspect of judicial diplomacy, encompassing both jurisprudential (e.g., discussion of case law) and strategic (e.g., maximizing influence) aims. This study presents a novel approach to assess such meetings. It analyzes meeting reports by the German Federal Constitutional Court between 1998-2019, using content and semantic network analysis. The content analysis shows that court meetings are focused on jurisprudential aspects, while strategic considerations also play a role, particularly in discussions with interlocutors from emerging democracies. These findings are validated by the semantic network analysis, which discloses that the main issues discussed are: recent case law, Europeanisation, and globalization. Hence, this study presents an analysis of a novel data source. Further, it contributes to judicial politics research as transnational court meetings could be the missing link to understand mutual decision citations.

Recommended citation: Meyer, Philipp. 2020. Discussing case law and promoting the rule of law: reports on bilateral court meetings as a novel data source to assess transjudicial communication. Working Paper.

Open justice at highest courts: A new avenue for comparative research.

Published in , 1900

Abstract

Openness and transparency have become defining goals for policy initiatives worldwide. Transparent and open political processes increase legitimacy by holding public institutions accountable and promote public trust by allowing public scrutiny. In the context of judiciaries, this discussion is informed by the open justice principle. This principle requires that the process of justice be visible, which in turn promotes trust in legal systems because citizens can see how justice works. However, scholars lack both a clear definition and approaches to measuring open justice in the courts. This chapter aims to establish open justice as a new avenue for comparative research in judicial politics by proposing a conceptualization and a measurement of the principle. Using data on trust in the legal system in 27 European countries, the chapter contributes to the literature by presenting the first empirical evidence for the assumption that open justice increases public trust.

Recommended citation: Meyer, Philipp. In Print. Open justice at highest courts: A new avenue for comparative research. In: Howard, Robert M., Kirk A. Randazzo, and Rebecca A. Reid (Ed.): Handbook on Law and Political Systems. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

, , 1900

Quantitative Textanalyse

Einführung in R: Datentypen und Funktionen

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Einführung in R: Erste Schritte

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Einführung in R: Wiederholung von Befehlen, Objekten und Funktionen

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

tidy R: Transformation, Zusammenfassen und Visualisieren von Daten mit tidy

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Erste Schritte mit quanteda: Textdaten importieren, einen Korpus erstellen und Dokumentenvariablen hinzufügen

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Textanalyse mit quanteda: Wiederholungen und Vorgriff

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Erste Schritte mit quanteda: Tokens and Document-Feature-Matrix

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Textstatistiken und Textähnlichkeiten mit quanteda

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Textanalyse mit Wörterbüchern und Sentiments mit quanteda

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Naïve Bayes Klassifikation mit quanteda

, , 2021

```{r setup, include=FALSE}

include this at top of your RMarkdown file for pretty output

make sure to have the printr package installed: install.packages(‘printr’)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, results = TRUE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE) #library(printr) ```

Wordscores mit quanteda (offizielles Quanteda-Tutorial in Englisch)

, , 2021

1. Einleitung

Überwachtes maschinelles Klassifizieren von Texten

, , 2021

1. Einleitung

Wordfish mit quanteda (offizielles Quanteda-Tutorial in Englisch)

, , 2021

1. Einleitung

Topic Models: LDA und STM

, , 2021

LDA