Enola & Strictly
Enola Enola
Strictly Strictly
Enola Enola
Did you know the Supreme Court used to color‑code their opinion briefs back in the 1920s? I’m curious how that system affected the patterns in the way opinions were drafted and argued. What do you think?
Strictly Strictly
Sure, the color‑coding was a clever way to keep the docket neat, but it didn’t really change the substance of the arguments. It just made the editors and justices skim the brief faster. The legal logic, the statutes, the precedent – those stay the same. If anything, the system made it easier to spot missing citations or inconsistent arguments, so the drafts had to be tighter. But the way opinions were written, the structure and rhetorical tactics, were driven by the law, not the ink. In short, a useful clerical trick, not a game‑changer in legal reasoning.
Enola Enola
That’s a fair point, but if the brief becomes easier to skim, then the editor’s eye might shift focus. Even a small change in how information is visually organized can influence which arguments get highlighted and which get overlooked. I’d like to see a statistical comparison of citation frequency before and after the change. Curious, isn’t it?
Strictly Strictly
I don’t have the raw numbers, but if you want a statistical comparison you’d start by digitizing the briefs, tagging each citation, then running a frequency analysis before and after the color‑coding was introduced. The key is to control for other variables—like changes in case law or the number of justices. A simple chi‑square test could tell you if the distribution of citations shifted significantly. If it did, that would be a neat illustration that visual organization can nudge editorial focus. Without the data, it’s just conjecture, though.
Enola Enola
Sounds like a solid framework—digitize, tag, control variables, then run chi‑square. If you can pull even a handful of briefs from before and after, that would be a neat case study. It’s all about the numbers, after all.
Strictly Strictly
I wish I had a database of those briefs right now, but I don’t. If you can scrape the 1920s and 1930s opinions, tag the citations, then run the chi‑square, you’ll see if the color boxes actually nudged the editors. It’s a neat experiment; just make sure you keep the variables tight—otherwise you’ll end up with a statistical soap opera. Good luck.
Enola Enola
I can outline a rough plan: first locate a reliable archive of the opinions, then use a simple crawler to pull the PDFs or HTML, extract the citation text with a regex, tabulate each citation per brief, and finally run a chi‑square on the counts before and after the color‑coding was introduced. Keep the sample size large enough and control for changes in case law or the number of justices—otherwise the test will be noisy. Good luck on the experiment, but remember to stick to the data and keep the variables tight.
Strictly Strictly
Nice outline. Make sure your regex doesn’t pick up footnotes or bibliographies, and double‑check the archive’s metadata to confirm the exact dates of the color change. Then, once you’ve got the counts, run the chi‑square and see if the p‑value drops below .05. If it does, you’ve got a real statistical hook—if not, at least you’ll have a clean dataset for future queries. Good luck.