Judicial Data Analysis
The analysis of large amounts of electronic data (evidentiary or legal) becomes more and more a challenge for war crimes cases. IJA-Forum maintains a roster of analysts qualified in using Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) for the analysis of large amounts of textual, graphic and audio-video data. Using the Judicial Data Analysis services will safe time while at the same time the quality of analysis will increase.
Use of Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software - Mixed Method Approach
Although open for any kind of international justice analysis, for the time being qualitative data analysis is focussed on war crimes trials. The complexity of war crimes cases (also crimes against humanity and genocide) and the interdependency of actors involved in different trials requires to keep track of data (mainly text such as transcripts, witness statements, judgments and other court decisions, filings by parties) produced in different proceedings. Qualified research based on computer assisted state of the art data mining and analysis allows to digest all this information and prepare findings suitable for litigation and hearings at courts. The analytical method used is a mixed method approach.Main Examples:
- Witnesses Statements Analysis:
One of the most crucial challenges in the preparation of a trial as well as during the trial and appeals phase of a war crimes case is to have a reliable overview about the diversity of witness statements, this is statements given by different witnesses or the same witness at different times. The party's precise understanding regarding consistency or contradictions of witness is a key issue for leading a case.
Computer aided qualitative data analysis methods allow to identify and analyse consistency or inconsistency patterns in witness statements across large amounts of text (e.g. the open transcripts of the ICTY) and provide trial lawyers with precise and comparative information regarding the content as well as circumstances of witness statements.
- Judgment Analysis:
Altogether there are a few hundred judgments in the field of international criminal justice, produced by ad hoc tribunals, mixed and national courts but also historical cases, which are available in an electronic format and therefore useful for computer aided text analysis. It can be said with certainty that there is no other way which is more efficient and more time saving to identify legal and factual issues reflected in the text of a large number of judgments. Moreover results and analytical findings can be presented in a structured and easy to understand way. E.g. to find all references to "widespread or systematic" in all or a selected group of international judgments would require a lawyer days to just locate all the relevant judgments. Based on the constantly growing judgement data base and the meta search data provided by CaseScreening this selection can be done within minutes or, if the search is more complex, hours. The analysis of data within these selected judgments, following the mixed method approach, allows to systematically provide all relevant information for the final legal assessment.
The practical process of using this service:
Requests for analytical services can be sent via Contact or writing a comment via the "Add comment" function below. Based on the specific details of the request IJA-Forum will provide a proposal for the analysis and describe the results and time frame to be expected. Finally an agreement will be signed containing the key elements of the analysis and obligations of the contracting sides.
Confidentiality issues:
IJA-Forum strictly follows international standards of confidentiality. Analysts will only receive the analytical request and data for the analysis, unless otherwise agreed in the contract.
Rates and payment:
Hourly and daily rates
This way of payment usually applies to ad hoc requests for analyses. The rates depend on the specifics of analytical work to be conducted for the required analysis. Hourly rates start at 25 Euro (e.g. search and text retrieval). If more conceptual work is required the rate for an hour can go up to 120 Euro.
Project payment
The rates for larger projects or continuous analytical services throughout e.g. a defense case will be determined on the basis of a specific project design.
