If I Had More Time, Would I Have Written a Shorter and Faster Decision? An Empirical Examination of the Evolution of Trial Court Decisions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article draws from my 2019 LLM thesis on Canadian judicial decisions, where I sought to understand two things: how current approaches to judicial decision-writing may impact access to justice and how might we make decisions a better source of data while also making them more timely, concise, accessible, and consistent. It presents the results and analysis of an original empirical study of the evolution of British Columbia trial decisions over 40 years (1980–2018). It argues that the current process for writing Canadian judicial decisions likely does not further the goals of access to justice and may even hinder them. Further study and targeted reforms are urgently needed to address delay, timeliness, accessibility, and consistency in Canadian judicial decisions. But reforms must not be based on anecdote, intuition, one-off examples, or single empirical studies. Instead, proposed reforms should be based on more deliberate design strategies such as those that human-centred design employs. For example, courts could and should generate extensive, transparent data on judicial decision-writing, judicial decisions, and the judicial process; rely on interdisciplinary methods to better understand current problems; ideate new ways of writing decisions that respond to that research; prototype and iterate those new ideas; and finally, extensively consult users about writing and reading decisions.\nCet article s’inspire de ma thèse de maîtrise en droit de 2019 portant sur les décisions judiciaires canadiennes, où j’ai cherché à comprendre deux choses : comment les approches actuelles en matière de rédaction des décisions judiciaires peuvent avoir un impact sur l’accès à la justice et comment nous pourrions faire de ces décisions une meilleure source de données tout en les rendant plus opportunes, concises, accessibles et cohérentes. Il présente les résultats et l’analyse d’une étude empirique originale de l’évolution des décisions de justice rendues en Colombie-Britannique sur 40 ans (1980–2018). Il soutient que le processus actuel de rédaction des décisions judiciaires canadiennes ne favorise sans doute pas les objectifs d’accès à la justice et peut même les entraver. Des études plus approfondies et des réformes ciblées s’imposent de toute urgence pour régler les problèmes de retard, de rapidité, d’accessibilité et de cohérence des décisions judiciaires canadiennes. Mais les réformes ne doivent pas être fondées sur des anecdotes, des intuitions, des exemples ponctuels ou des études empiriques uniques. Les réformes proposées devraient plutôt être fondées sur des stratégies de conception plus délibérées, comme celles qu’emploie la conception centrée sur l’humain. Par exemple, les tribunaux pourraient et devraient produire des données exhaustives et transparentes sur la rédaction des décisions judiciaires, les décisions judiciaires elles-mêmes et le processus judiciaire; s’appuyer sur des méthodes interdisciplinaires pour mieux comprendre les problèmes actuels; imaginer de nouvelles façons de rédiger les décisions qui répondent à cette recherche; prototyper et énoncer ces nouvelles idées; et enfin, consulter largement les utilisateurs sur la rédaction et la lecture des décisions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.174 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".