This article illustrates the results of the third stage of a research project on the
generic structure and linguistic traits of court judgments written in Italian. Four
corpora in electronic format have been compiled, including texts by the Court of
Justice of the European Union, the Italian Court of Cassation, the Swiss Federal
Court and the Appeal Court of Canton Ticino. Statistical software was used to assess
differences in terms of lexical richness, lexical density and readability and
to calculate verb tense frequencies and distribution patterns. The shortcomings
of automatic quantitative analysis may be redressed through qualitative surveys
and, in addition to highlighting differences in the Italian written in Italy,
Switzerland and the EU institutions, data can provide insights and suggestions
for more effective drafting techniques.
