Research Topic Title: Judges shape the law… but how far is too far?
You might think that Parliament makes the law and judges simply apply it, but judges actually have significant power to shape legal rules. Statutes leave gaps and ambiguities that judges must interpret, creating precedents that must be followed in future cases. Because legal reasoning allows for multiple interpretations, judges have significant leeway to select and frame prior cases in ways that support their preferred outcomes—a practice I call outcome-oriented citation.
Scholars have long debated what influences judges to do this, from political and social factors to personal beliefs, but what has been missing is a way to systematically assess whether judges are using precedent faithfully or stretching it beyond legitimate legal reasoning. In my PhD, I created Judicial Citation Analysis (JCA), an innovative method for uncovering hidden judicial influences. By analysing patterns in how judges cite and interpret past cases, JCA brings transparency and accountability to judicial decision-making by helping to distinguish between legitimate legal development and precedent misuse. No existing method provides this level of systematic scrutiny of judicial reasoning, making JCA a transformative tool for legal scholarship and practice.
In my PhD, I applied JCA to the law of financial remedies, which governs how property is divided on divorce. I found that lower courts had distorted Supreme Court rulings on non-discrimination, maintaining an appearance of fidelity to precedent while shifting the law in ways that reinforced systemic gender bias.
My project aims to disseminate my findings about financial remedies law and to start scaling the use of JCA up to other areas where judicial discretion plays a large role (eg child law, tort law) and to other common law jurisdictions (eg Ireland, Australia, USA), improving transparency, consistency, and fairness in the legal system.
Mentor: Professor Rebecca Probert
Institutional Profile: https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/46394-lucy-crompton/about
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-lucy-crompton-727620127/
Publications:
‘We need to talk about Miller; McFarlane – why we’ve got compensation all wrong’, Child and Family Law Quarterly, (2026) forthcoming.
‘The Curious Case of the Vanishing Fraud’, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, (2022) 44:4, 537-540, DOI: 10.1080/09649069.2022.2136704.
‘Domestic Violence Protection Notices and Orders: Protecting Victims or the Public Purse?’ [2014] Fam Law 62.
‘Domestic Violence Protection Notices and Orders: Vulnerable to Human Rights Challenge?’ [2013] Fam Law 1588.
‘Where’s the Sex in Same-Sex Marriage?’ [2013] Fam Law 564.
‘Civil Partnership Bill – the Illusion of Equality’ [2004] Fam Law 888.