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The Law as Language: A Computational Text Analysis of Judicial Writing Style
Working paper   Open access

The Law as Language: A Computational Text Analysis of Judicial Writing Style

Jason Reinecke and Jason Rantanen
U Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper, Vol.No. 2026-05
SSRN
04/24/2026
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.6435481
url
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6435481View
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Abstract

We provide a holistic computational overview of judicial opinion writing style and the first computational text analysis of the opinions of the judges of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Our study provides empirical evidence to help guide the voluminous (and mostly theoretical) existing literature on judicial style. This work is unabashedly descriptive: while there are many interesting questions that computational text analysis can be used to explore, there is little existing work that provides a foundation. This work aims to fill that gap and set the stage for future projects.Among other findings, we find strong evidence that Federal Circuit judges’ writing styles vary considerably among numerous dimensions and that some judges are thus more successful than others at writing clear, concise, and complete opinions. Perhaps most importantly, we find that the judges vary considerably in how long their opinions are and in how frequently they cite to both precedent and the record. We also find some evidence that the Federal Circuit judges tend to write in a more formal manner and that they may be more reliant on their law clerks than Supreme Court justices.

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