This paper presents a new approach to studying continuity and change in precedent-setting by high courts and international courts, with a focus on the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Like other precedent-setting courts, the judgments of the CJEU include holdings specifying rules and principles. A core methodological challenge in the field lies in identifying changes to the authority of these holdings—their precedential value—without being dependent on resource-intensive doctrinal legal research. We suggest a methodological innovation that builds on the latest development in artificial intelligence. By relying on the CJEU’s own references to previous decisions, and the semantic similarity between strings of judgment text, we train a machine learning model to predict relevant citations to precedents for any legal proposition relating to EU law. These “expected citations” are used to assess—over time—the precedential value of court decisions, i.e. their life cycles as authoritative expressions of rules and principles. Such trajectories, in effect, signify continuity and change in specific precedents. While our approach falls short of capturing what the law “is” in a doctrinal sense, by identifying the life cycles of precedents we can capture where and when change occurs. Our methodological innovation opens for theoretical advancement of theories of policy change close to the core of political science and law.
Prof. Daniel Naurin
Daniel Naurin is Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo and affiliated with the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. He was previously Centre Director at ARENA Centre for European Studies (2020- 2024), at the University of Oslo. Daniel Naurin has held positions and visiting fellowships at the Department of Public and International Law (Oslo), European University Institute (Florence), Emory University (Atlanta), Monash European Centre (Melbourne), Sussex European Institute (Brighton), and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (Stockholm). Daniel Naurin has worked with a broad range of research themes during his academic career, including judicial politics, interest group politics and international negotiations. Much of his empirical work has focused on the politics of the European Union. His ongoing and most recent projects study judicial decision-making in the Court of Justice of the EU, the Swedish Supreme Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; coalition building and the impact of gender in the negotiations in the Council of the EU; and the link between lobbying and public opinion in Europe.