Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-16T02:51:42.036Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3.9 - Mining Information from Statutory Texts in a Public Health Domain

from C. - Legal Research, Government Data, and Access to Legal Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2021

Daniel Martin Katz
Affiliation:
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Ron Dolin
Affiliation:
Harvard Law School, Massachusetts
Michael J. Bommarito
Affiliation:
Stanford CodeX
Get access

Summary

This case study describes how a team of computer scientists assisted a team of public health researchers by applying machine learning to extract information from statutory texts. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health (SPH) had been manually mining specific information from federal, state, and local laws and regulations concerning public health system emergency preparedness and response. The analysts used the information to assess and compare states’ regulatory frameworks concerning emergency preparedness. They retrieved candidate legal and regulatory texts from a full-text legal information service, identified relevant spans of text, and systematically categorized the spans in terms of a coding scheme. The SPH’s coding scheme captured information about agencies and actors in a state’s public health system who were directed by statute to interact with one another in particular ways while dealing with public health emergencies. Based on the coded information, the SPH constructed statutory network diagrams of legally mandated interactions among actors. These network diagrams provide insight into those statutory texts that directed the interactions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Legal Informatics , pp. 371 - 392
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×