The Network of French Legal Codes

TL;DR

This paper models the French legal system as a network of codes connected by citations, revealing a dense, small-world-like structure with key 'rich club' codes and thematic communities, opening new research avenues.

Contribution

It introduces a network-based analysis of French legal codes, identifying key codes and community structures, and proposes the concept of 'concentrated world' networks in legal systems.

Findings

Identified a 'rich club' of 10 highly interconnected codes.

Discovered three major thematic communities within the legal network.

Proposed the 'concentrated world' as a new network model for legal systems.

Abstract

We propose an analysis of the codified Law of France as a structured system. Fifty two legal codes are selected on the basis of explicit legal criteria and considered as vertices with their mutual quotations forming the edges in a network which properties are analyzed relying on graph theory. We find that a group of 10 codes are simultaneously the most citing and the most cited by other codes, and are also strongly connected together so forming a "rich club" sub-graph. Three other code communities are also found that somewhat partition the legal field is distinct thematic sub-domains. The legal interpretation of this partition is opening new untraditional lines of research. We also conjecture that many legal systems are forming such new kind of networks that share some properties in common with small worlds but are far denser. We propose to call "concentrated world".