Research Note: Investigating the Viability of Stylometric Analysis to Attribute Authorship of Supreme Court Opinions

Abstract

Function word content analysis is a proven method previously used to study disputed authorship in documents such as historical letters and novels. It has been used in similar fashion to review Supreme Court Justices’ legal opinions, demonstrating general contribution by clerks and variation related to their influence. It has not been used to create a “fingerprint” for clerks that may be used not only to understand their contributions but to directly attribute authorship of any given opinion to them or their Justice. This study builds on previous work to test the potential of a new application of this method in determining the contributions of Supreme Court clerks to the authorship of opinions. Drawing on the academic writings of clerks and Justices, this method has potential for attributing authorship contributions of clerks to individual legal opinions. This could open opinions to review as early and formative work of legal scholars and jurists, many of whom serve as clerks early in their careers. It may also have application to investigating authorship contributions in other legal writings.