A computer-automated system and method identify text in a first "citing"
court case, near a "citing instance" (in which a second "cited" court
case is cited), that indicates the reason(s) for citing (RFC). The
automated method of designating text, taken from a set of citing
documents, as reasons for citing (RFC) that are associated with
respective citing instances of a cited document, has steps including:
obtaining contexts of the citing instances in the respective citing
documents (each context including text that includes the citing instance
and text that is near the citing instance), analyzing the content of the
contexts, and selecting (from the citing instances' context) text that
constitutes the RFC, based on the analyzed content of the contexts. A
related computer-automated system and method selects content words that
are highly related to the reasons a particular document is cited, and
gives them weights that indicate their relative relevance. Another
related computer-automated system and method forms lists of morphological
forms of words. Still another related computer-automated system and
method scores sentences to show their relevance to the reasons a document
is cited. Also, another related computer-automated system and method
generates lists of content words. In a preferred embodiment, the systems
and methods are applied to legal (especially case law) documents and
legal (especially case law) citations.