Network Visualisation as a Citator User Interface

Authors

  • Neil du Toit University of Cape Town

Abstract

This paper describes the benefits of using network visualisation as a user interface to Citators. I show that three types of search queries that arise in legal research can be framed as querying the existence of certain composite citation relationships, and that these queries can be evaluated by the user significantly faster using network visualisation. I discuss further implications of network visualisation for exploratory data analysis, and I present our work on the AfricanLII Citator application, currently in beta, which provides such an interface to a citator that indexes case law from 15 countries in Africa.

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Published

2019-10-13

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2019): Special Issue on "Visual Law"

Section

Visualisation of Legal Knowledge, Principles, and Rationale

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