Precedent and the "Web of Law"

During the first few classes I will be talking about the nature of contracts, legal analysis, and analysing cases. I will also be giving you passwords so that you may access a new legal metasearch engine [ MetaJuris 1.0] I have developed in conjunction with Danico Lee at the Information Technology & Telecommunications Center here at KU. One of the base search engines incorporated into MetaJuris 1.0 is PreCydent, developed by Prof. Tom Smith at the University of San Diego. This data base and search engine permits you to discover how many times a particular case has been cited by other cases and gives you, therefore, an idea of the "authority" of the case as compared to other cases. Those of you who are familiar with citation indices, most often used in science, will be familiar with this notion. For those of you who are not, don't worry; I'll explain it. In the meantime, I suggest that you all have a look at Prof. Smith's pathbreaking article, "The Web of Law." It can be accessed online at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=642863. Depending on your computer and network connection, you may have trouble downloading or viewing the complete text. If this occurs., you should use a law school computer since the law school is a subscriber to the SSRN network on which the article resides. When you read the article, do not be frightened either by the mathematics or the technical computer jargon. Just get the basic idea of what Smith is saying and I'll explain the rest in class.