Exploring Partisan Interest in Language of Judicial Opinions

Exploring Partisan Interest in Language of Judicial Opinions | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Exploring Partisan Interest in Language of Judicial Opinions Hugo Oliveira This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7345843/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Although court partisan influence is somehow intrinsic, it remains unclear the degree of influence partisan justice nomination has in the language of judicial opinions and the main subject of the influence of attention by the given parties. In this article, we explore current computational methods to assess and determine the main subject topics that the partisans provide a particular focus on in large-scale annotated corpora. Making use of a publicly available dataset with court opinions from the \gls{usa}, we conduct an exploratory analysis and estimate word embeddings found in legal opinions conditioned to the identified partisans to identify what the subjects were partisan are keener to give attention, and in combination with trained models identify the particular author of the individual opinion. In an exceeding series of exploratory analyses and word embeddings, we discover strong evidence that dominant topics such as economics and land are addressed mainly by right-wing partisan nominated justices. At the same time, the left-wing focuses on social and racial disparities in society, with partisan nomination showing clear evidence that the produced opinions among republicans nominated justices rely on a well-defined set of topics, suggesting the existence of a common language and topics produced by this subgroup of justices. The results show some implications for the neutrality of the language for understanding the entrenchment of biased decisions on specific partisan and political topics of interest. Court Opinions Partisan Identification NLP Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7345843","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":501694459,"identity":"28d5fd4b-817e-4004-8f65-6e354ec2892d","order_by":0,"name":"Hugo Oliveira","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA5ElEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACAyQ244MKUrUwG5yB6m0gVgubBFFazCXSLz5g+GMjb97e/qziQAVD4nYG3uMP8GmxnJFTbMDYlmY458wZsxsHzjAk7mzgS8TvsBs5aRKMDYcZZ0jksN3+2MaQuOEAjyFhLQx/DtvPkH/+rODgP6K0pB+TYGA7nDhDgsGM4WADMVrOvGE2SGxLS57Bk2MsceCYhPHOZr7EGXi1HE9/+ODDHxvbGezHH344UGMju52998AHfFoYGHgMGBIQPAkGA2Ye/BoYGNgfoNnLQFDLKBgFo2AUjDAAAD6PTsC7Ct57AAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"University of Porto","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Hugo","middleName":"","lastName":"Oliveira","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-08-11 11:23:35","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7345843/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7345843/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":90733440,"identity":"477c7a9e-2051-43df-b1e3-afacd28afe8a","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-06 18:31:24","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":867499,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"SUBMITTEDHSOFEUPPAPERCPUPartisan.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7345843/v1_covered_dd3335ce-95d7-4a03-be88-4da1f4900ec6.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Exploring Partisan Interest in Language of Judicial Opinions","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Court Opinions, Partisan Identification, NLP","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7345843/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7345843/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"Although court partisan influence is somehow intrinsic, it remains unclear the degree of influence partisan justice nomination has in the language of judicial opinions and the main subject of the influence of attention by the given parties. In this article, we explore current computational methods to assess and determine the main subject topics that the partisans provide a particular focus on in large-scale annotated corpora. Making use of a publicly available dataset with court opinions from the \\gls{usa}, we conduct an exploratory analysis and estimate word embeddings found in legal opinions conditioned to the identified partisans to identify what the subjects were partisan are keener to give attention, and in combination with trained models identify the particular author of the individual opinion. In an exceeding series of exploratory analyses and word embeddings, we discover strong evidence that dominant topics such as economics and land are addressed mainly by right-wing partisan nominated justices. At the same time, the left-wing focuses on social and racial disparities in society, with partisan nomination showing clear evidence that the produced opinions among republicans nominated justices rely on a well-defined set of topics, suggesting the existence of a common language and topics produced by this subgroup of justices. 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