Link docket authorities to search results

[mlissner]

When you're looking at the authorities page for a docket, it shows you all the case law that has been cited in the case so far:

That's cool, but it leaves a big question unanswered: Which documents are making the citations to those cases?

For example, in the screenshot above, we learn that U.S. v. Arthur Young has been cited six times. But which documents do that?

Well, that case has an ID of 111119, so we can actually check using the search engine with a query like:

docket_id:63337698 cites:111119

That reveals:

Cool!

So there is an easy way to fix this. Just make the word "references" into a link to the search results, so it looks like:

And the link goes to the search results.

One gotcha: The citations are to opinions, not clusters, but the authorities page shows clusters. The way to solve this is to make the link use the opinion IDs, not the cluster IDs, and to be sure to include all of the sub-opinions for the cluster in an OR query. For example, cluster 123 might have sub-opinion 345 and 456. You might think that the query should be docket:whatever cites:123, but that'd be wrong. The correct query is docket:whatever cites:(345 OR 456). We do this elsewhere too.

[tactipus]

Hi guys! I want to help on this issue!

[mlissner]

Lovely, it's yours, @tactipus! It's on our sprint that ends this week, but if you think you can take it on, we'll hold off and leave it to you. @elisa-a-v is assigned here and would be the natural person to help guide you if you need help getting set up.

[tactipus]

I'm sorry, but I just re-read this message. I didn't realize you were on a sprint for this, & I was looking at the code more deeply since my last message & i would not be fast enough to finish it this week. I think i'll just follow along for now. my apologies!

[elisa-a-v]

@tactipus I plan on looking into this later today, if you're available we might be able to do some pair programming, which I know is not everyone's cup of tea but I personally love it so let me know, that way you can still contribute without so much pressure :)

oh and thank you for reaching out regardless! 🙌🏽

[tactipus]

@elisa-a-v i'd love to, but today's no good :/

[mlissner]

Hm, I'm a bit confused as I play with this because the numbers don't line up. For example, on this docket, it says that there are " 22 references to Rodriguez v. West Publishing Corp., 563 F.3d 948 (9th Cir. 2009)":

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4214664/authorities/national-veterans-legal-services-program-v-united-states/

But when I click the new link:

https://www.courtlistener.com/?type=r&q=docket_id%3A4214664%20AND%20cites%3A(1264596)

I get:

I would have expected 1 docket with 22 documents.

Is this because that one document has 22 references to Rodriguez?

[tactipus]

Nvm

[ERosendo]

Is this because that one document has 22 references to Rodriguez?

@mlissner This seems right! A manual check reveals 22 occurrences of the string "563 F.3d 948" within the text of the document.

[tactipus]

Ahhh crap I wish I hadn't edited my comment. It should also be more clear in the DOM that the references are scattered throughout the documents. There can be a number that tells the user the number of citations each user has.

I'm open to pair programming!

[mlissner]

OK, there are two possible solutions:

1. Fix the authorities page to say "22 reference from 1 document cite..." and then make "1 document" into the link.

   I don't know if we can easily get this from the data we have.

2. Update the search results to display the depth of treatment when a cites query is made, so that each result shown says something like, "22 references to case XYZ".

   I think we do that (or used to do that?) elsewhere in the search results, but I can't trigger it now.

Anyhow, @elisa-a-v, can you please make an issue with these two approaches, and we'll get the scheduled for a later sprint?

[elisa-a-v]

I opened the issue, and I looked a little bit into this so I added my findings there :)