Trial by Internet: A Randomized Field Experiment on Wikipedia’s Influence on Judges’ Legal Reasoning

In the common law tradition, legal decisions are supposed to be grounded in both, statute and precedent, with legal training guiding practitioners on the most important and relevant touchstones. But actors in the legal system are also human, with the failings and foibles seen throughout society. This may lead them to take methodological shortcuts, even relying on unknown internet users for determinations of a legal source’s relevance.

In the article, Neil Thompson, Brian Flanagan, Edana Richardson, Brian McKenzie, and Xueyun Luo investigate the influence on legal judgments of a pervasive, but unauthoritative source of legal knowledge: Wikipedia. Using the first randomized field experiment ever undertaken in this area—the gold standard for identifying causal effects—we show that Wikipedia shapes judicial behavior. Wikipedia articles on decided cases, written by law students, guide both the decisions that judges cite as precedents and the textual content of their written opinions.

The information and legal analysis offered on Wikipedia led judges to cite the relevant legal cases more often and to talk about them in ways comparable to how the Wikipedia authors had framed them. Collectively, the study provides clear empirical evidence of a new form of influence on judges’ application of the law—easily accessible, user-generated online content. Because such content is not authoritative, the analysis reveals a policy gap: if an easily-accessible analysis of legal questions is already being relied on, it behooves the legal community to accelerate efforts to ensure that such analysis is both comprehensive and expert.

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