Introduction – SCC Data This research was able to find patterns by using a data-driven approach to reading decisions written by the Supreme Court of Canada. The advantage of a data-driven method is that it allows for a “far reading” which can pick up high-level patterns that might get missed when reading a decision. Broadly, […]
Regular expressions, or regexs, look at assigned blocks of text to find user defined patterns. For a basic overview of regexs, both how to use regexs and why, see Data Science for Lawyers Lesson 3 – Regular Expressions. Another great site to experiment and test regexs with immediate feedback is regexr, which will highlight regex […]
E-Commerce is a relatively new area of free trade agreements. The WTO first established a comprehensive work programme on e-commerce in 1998. At the WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires in 2017 a group of WTO Members agreed to start exploratory talks on e-commerce. Negotiations over a potential multilateral rulebook on e-commerce have been ongoing […]
A constitution’s primary role is to describe the rules a government must obey when governing a country. The documents set clear “rules of the game” and protect a population from their government’s abuses of power. Yet, in every country, the optimal rules and protections will be different. As a result, protections that may allow one […]
Over the past 125 years, states have consistently updated their laws to protect against discrimination. This means that historically legal systems were ripe with inequities that would not be tolerated by today’s standards. The list of potential grievances is lengthy, but discrimination on the basis of sex and gender would be high on any list. […]
The regulation of firearms is often controversial, but more than half of the constitutions in the world have some sort of language referring to firearms. In offering these protections, countries must balance property rights, protections against tyranny, public safety, and a handful of other considerations. To do so, there is often a need to coordinate […]
There are few moments in a country’s history that are more important than the adoption of a new constitution. If a constitution is implemented and upheld by the courts, then people are protected from their country’s most egregious abuses of power. The moment at which a constitution is adopted is important because these protections are […]
A sizable part of global trade and investment flows are governed by rules enshrined in free trade agreements and custom unions. These rules, however, can be surprisingly hard to find and complex to navigate. Databases on preferential trade agreements (PTAs) typically only have limited regional coverage or do not provide easy access to treaty full […]
access_time Last update March 17, 2021.
