Developing methods to trace the right to housing in national eviction litigation: Combining computational methods and doctrinal analysis

The right to housing is a fundamental human right, yet its role in domestic litigation remains difficult to trace. This paper examines to what extent the right to housing plays a role in Dutch eviction case law through a dataset of 6,005 cases, combining automated citation extraction, keyword searches, and manual verification. We identify 930 cases in which the right to housing explicitly or indirectly played a role. The European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 8, emerges as the most significant international source. International case law becomes particularly relevant where domestic protections are weakened, while national cases can function as gateways through which the (international) right to housing enters domestic legal discourse. Methodologically, this study demonstrates that integrating computational tools with traditional legal methods identifies more relevant cases and references than either approach alone, while also underscoring the need for a careful validation of automated results.