Justice: Judges also read Wikipedia

Enlarge image

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia: Lawyers can also quickly read it here

Photo: Christoph Hardt / Future Image / IMAGO

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia has set itself the goal of collecting the "knowledge of the world" - but sometimes the writing down of facts has an influence on the world itself.

In an extensive study, researchers in Ireland and the US have shown that Wikipedia articles have a measurable impact on Irish court decisions.

The fact that Wikipedia, written by voluntary authors, plays a role in court is no longer up for debate.

German courts also repeatedly cite the online lexicon in their distinctions - especially when it comes to facts that are undisputed between the parties.

The content of Wikipedia articles themselves is also a frequent reason for legal disputes.

Judgment quotes examined

In the current study, however, the researchers wanted to examine the influence on the legal content of the judgments.

To do this, they had law students write 154 articles about Supreme Court decisions in Ireland.

They published half of it on Wikipedia, the other half stayed in the drawer.

The result after two years of observation: the decisions for which there was an article in Wikipedia were cited more than 20 percent more often than the decisions of the control group.

A language analysis suggests that the wording of the articles also had an impact on the verdicts.

The citations were primarily found in the judgments of lower instances.

In the case of the highest courts themselves, there was probably no need to be reminded of their own judgements.

The researchers put forward the hypothesis that judges with a high workload in particular rely on the knowledge abbreviation Wikipedia.

They don't necessarily have to look it up in the encyclopedia themselves: Wikipedia articles are ranked particularly highly by almost all search engines, and Google even publishes abstracts of the free articles next to the search results.

quality control important

"With a resource as widely used as Wikipedia, we want to make sure we build institutions that ensure the information is of the highest quality," said Neil Thompson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After the experiment became known, Wikipedia authors took a critical look at the articles and praised their quality.

The Irish judiciary, on the other hand, is not happy with the experiment and the conclusion.

The Irish Times quotes several court officials who dismiss the impression that judges rely on Wikipedia.

However, an anonymous lawyer admits that Wikipedia footnotes are considered a valuable reference for legal articles.

However, one does not rely on the summary in the encyclopedia, which many laypeople also write.

The similarity in the judgments is also traced back to another source: it is not possible that the judges introduced the relevant sources, but rather the lawyers of the plaintiffs and the defendants.

tmk