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A Structural and Grammatical Analysis of the Estonian Constitution Cover

A Structural and Grammatical Analysis of the Estonian Constitution

By: Addi Rull,  Tõnu Tamme and  Leo Võhandu  
Open Access
|Oct 2016

Abstract

The authors propose a novel quantitative method to analyse the structure of legal texts. The method enables to determine grammatical similarity between legal texts. The authors use the external theory of fundamental rights to separate the text of fundamental rights of the Estonian Constitution into two categories of norms: constitutional rights and restrictions. Grammatical similarity between constitutional rights, restrictions and selected legal acts and case law is measured. The layer of special norms renders the best grammatical similarity with the text of fundamental rights. The same grammatical similarity tests can be replicated to cover other jurisdictions in the future. The research is experimental, but the authors believe that the method can be utilised in fields of computational linguistics and legal text mining, but also in research where legal text structures are analysed for various purposes.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/bjes-2016-0013 | Journal eISSN: 2674-4619 | Journal ISSN: 2674-4600
Language: English
Page range: 76 - 95
Published on: Oct 20, 2016
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2016 Addi Rull, Tõnu Tamme, Leo Võhandu, published by Tallinn University of Technology
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.