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Last Updated: 2 September 2010
The global development of free access to legal information
Graham Greenleaf[1]
Citation
Published in Paliwala A (Ed) A History of Legal Informatics LEFIS Series, University of Zaragoza Press, 2010; republished as Greenleaf G., “The Global development of free access to legal information”, in European Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2010.
Abstract
Since the mid-1990s the Internet’s World-Wide-Web has provided the necessary technical platform to enable free access to computerised legal information. Prior to the web there were many online legal information systems, and numerous legal information products distributed on CD-ROM, but there was no significant provision of free access to legal information anywhere in the world. Both government and private sector online legal publishers charged for access. The web provided the key element required for free public access – a low cost distribution mechanism. For publishers it was close to a ‘no cost’ distribution mechanism if they were not required to pay for outgoing bandwidth. The ease of use of graphical browsers from around 1994, and the web’s use of hypertext as its principal access mechanism (at that time) meant that the web provided a simple and relatively consistent means by which legal information could be both provided and accessed, an attractive alternative to the proprietary, expensive and training-intensive search engines on which commercial online services largely relied. The development of free access Internet law services was based on these factors.[2]
1. Legal Information Institutes
In many countries the
first attempts to exploit the advantages of the web for providing legal
information came from the academic sector
rather than government, and did so
with an explicit ideology of free access
provision.[3] Within a
few years of the formation of first legal information institute in 1992 the
first group of such organisations became known
collectively as ‘legal
information institutes’ or ‘LIIs’. Those expressions became
synonymous with free access
to legal information, though in fact they have a
narrower meaning.
Two distinguishing characteristic of the ‘LIIs’
(in my usage) are that (i) they publish legal information from more than
one
source (not just ‘their own’ information), for free access via the
Internet, and (ii) they collaborate with each
other through membership of the
‘Free Access to Law Movement’. Most but not all share three other
characteristics. They
collaborate through data sharing networks or portals, and
also technical networks for back-up security purposes. Most are independent
of
government, though this is diminishing as a distinguishing feature. The majority
use one of two open source search
engines:[4] the Sino
search engine[5]
developed by AustLII (previously shared with other LIIs, and open source since
2006), and the Lucene search
engine[6] utilised by
LexUM in the development of various LIIs.
‘Legal information
institute’ (or ‘LII’), as used here, therefore refers to a
sub-set of the providers of
free access to law, namely those from across the
world who have decided to collaborate both politically and technically. Taken
together,
the LIIs are the most coordinated, and among the largest, providers of
free access to legal information, but they are far from alone
in providing free
access to legal information. This chapter is not about ‘free access to
law’ per se, but focuses on
a particular grouping of providers of free
access to legal information, while discussing the more general context of
‘free
access to law’ in which they operate.
As at April 2009
there are 30 members of the Free Access to Law Movement, listed in Appendix 1.
Most are discussed at least briefly
in this Chapter, but more detailed
descriptions of all are available
elsewhere.[7]
2. The earliest LIIs
Three LIIs played key roles in early developments:
the Legal Information Institute (Cornell), AustLII, and LexUM. They each
developed
from research projects on various aspects of legal automation going
back to the 1980s, and were ready to capitalise on the world-wide-web’s
sudden emergence into public prominence around 1994.
The Legal
Information
Institute[8] was
started at Cornell University Law School in 1992, and developed by 1994 a number
of databases primarily of US federal law (particularly
the US Code and US
Supreme Court decisions). ‘The LII’, as it became known, was the
first significant source of free
access to law on the Internet, and demonstrated
that a free access service could provide both high quality document
presentation,
and very high rates of access. It also assisted the development of
one of the first other LIIs, the Zambian Legal Information Institute
(ZamLII)[9] in 1996. US
federal law is still the main focus of the LII (Cornell), with its State
coverage being limited to New York State. It
has instead concentrated on various
innovative projects: ‘Libraries’ of commentary on legal ethics and
social security;
Wex,[10] a
collaboratively built, free access legal dictionary and
encyclopedia[11]
(perhaps the first attempts by a LII to use wiki technology to develop and
present content); and a research project concerning electronic
rulemaking.[12]
The
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) was started by two Law
Schools in Sydney, Australia, in
1995,[13] based on
work as the ‘DataLex Project’ going back a further
decade.[14] It
borrowed the ‘LII’ suffix from Cornell, as others have done since.
By 1999 it had developed databases from all nine
Australian jurisdictions
covering key providers of case law, legislation, treaties and some other
content. AustLII’s initial
significance was that it was the first attempt
worldwide to build a comprehensive national free access legal information system
rivalingrivalling
that of commercial publishers. AustLII currently provides over
250 databases of Australian
law[15] including:
consolidated legislation from all 9 jurisdictions; annual legislation and bills
from some; Point-in-Time legislation from
three
States;[16] decisions
from over 120 Courts and Tribunals (a third of which are not otherwise available
online); all Australian Treaties since
1900;[17] law reform
reports from all
jurisdictions;[18] and
over 40 law journals in full
text.[19] It is
starting to develop subject-oriented
‘libraries’.[20]
LexUM[21]
at the University of Montreal commenced in 1993, with a Law Gopher server (then
via the Public Law Research Center), and created
the first Canadian legal site
and the first legal site available in French, as well as carrying out many
research and consultancy
projects.[22] During
the 1990s it built various Canadian law sites including the Judgments of the
Supreme Court of
Canada.[23] In 2000
LexUM built the Canadian Legal Information
Institute[24]
(CanLII), which quickly became a very large national LII comprehensively
covering Canada’s federal system, matching AustLII
in size and
usage.[25] LexUM
initially used the Sino search engine, then adopted the open-source Lucene
search engine and other development tools. CanLII’s
databases now include
decisions of Canadian superior courts and a broad range of administrative
tribunals (more than 120 databases),
with historical
scope[26]
typically back to around 2000 but sometimes considerably earlier (to 1985 for
Supreme Court decisions). It also publishes historical
and up-to-date versions
of legislation from all but one of the 14 Canadian jurisdictions. It has a
bilingual (English-French) user
interface. CanLII innovations include the
Reflex[27] citator
which provides for each decision on CanLII a ‘RefLex record’ listing
related decisions, ‘noteups’
(decisions citing the decision), and
legislation and decisions cited.
3. The LII movement expands, 2000-
From 2000 AustLII started to use its search engine
(Sino[28])
and other software to assist organisations in other countries, initially limited
to those with academic roots, to establish LIIs
with similar functionality.
AustLII helped to establish between 2000-04 servers and databases for five LIIs
(BAILII,[29]
PacLII,[30]
HKLII,[31]SAFLII[32]
and NZLII[33]).
It operated the servers from Sydney for a period on behalf of its local
partners, with progressive local take-over of operations.
All use
AustLII’s Sino search engine. Responsibility for obtaining and developing
legal data was usually undertaken by the
local partner from the outset.
The
British & Irish Legal Information
Institute[34]
(BAILII), formed in 2000, is based at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies,
London and operated by the BAILII Trust. BAILII includes
almost 80
databases[35]
covering 6 jurisdictions (United Kingdom, England and Wales, Scotland, Northern
Ireland, Ireland and some European court decisions),
including case law,
legislation and law reform reports from all the jurisdictions it covers. Back
capture of cases and law reform
documents through its Open Law
Project[36] gives
it considerable historical depth.
The Pacific Islands Legal Information
Institute[37]
(PacLII), is operated by the University of the South Pacific (USP) School of
Law, located in Vanuatu. PacLII was re-developed with
AustLII in 2001, from
substantial content provided by the School of Law’s site from 1997. PacLII
provides databases of the
laws of twenty island countries and territories of the
Pacific. It is the principal source of case law and legislation for many of
these countries, is the most substantial free access to law facility in
developing countries, and was the earliest regional
system.[38]
The Hong Kong Legal Information
Institute[39]
(HKLII) has been operated since 2002 by the University of Hong Kong with 12
databases of the law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region
(SAR).[40] It is a
bilingual system and has developed its own search engine for the Chinese
content.[41] An
innovation is its joint operation of the Community Legal Information
Centre[42] (CLIC),
a bilingual community legal information web site with extensive links to HKLII.
Either HKLII or LawPhil in the Philippines
were the first LII in Asia.
The Southern African Legal Information
Institute[43]
(SAFLII) publishes over 50 databases of superior court judgments from 16
English-speaking and Portuguese-speaking counties in Southern
and Eastern
Africa, and four regional tribunals. It is endorsed by the Southern African
Judges Commission. It is moving beyond case
law to legislation and law reform.
It was established in 2003 by the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Faculty
of Law (which
had pioneered the Internet provision of South African law during
the 1990s)[44] and
AustLII, but only covered South African law. In 2006 its operations were
transferred to the South African Constitutional Court
Trust, who gave it a
regional orientation and significant resources, and AustLII provided technical
assistance. Since then it has
rapidly become a landmark in the transparency of
Africa’s legal systems, playing a major role in the whole
continent.[45]
The
New Zealand Legal Information
Institute[46]
(NZLII), based at University of Otago’s Faculty of Law since 2004, now has
30 databases covering almost all significant New
Zealand Courts and Tribunals,
bilateral treaties, law reform reports, and four law journals. It involved many
years’ effort
to obtain content for free
access.[47] The final
element, legislation, was added in 2008, making its coverage near-comprehensive
of current law. In addition, CyLaw[48]
in Cyprus was established in 2002 by a local lawyer using AustLII's Sino search
engine and contains all judgments issued by the Supreme
Court of Cyprus since
1997 (in Greek) and other databases, but has been independently operated from
inception.
All of the systems AustLII has assisted are now operated with
independent local control and resources, and this is the major reason
for their
success. AustLII’s aim of assisting partners to achieve full local
take-over as quickly as possible has been effective,
with only the server of
NZLII (the most recently-formed) still being operated by AustLII.
Having
established CanLII, LexUM used the tools it had developed to create, with local
partners, Droit Francophone (2003), JuriBurkina
(2003) and JuriNiger (2007).
Droit Francophone is discussed later. JuriBurkina[49]
is the judicial information center of Burkina Faso, launched in 2004 and
operated by the Burkina Faso Bar Association with LexUM’s
assistance. It
provides over 1,000 decisions to 2007 from eight of the country’s courts
and tribunals.[50] JuriNiger[51]
provides nearly 2000 decisions of five courts to 2007. It is developed by LexUM
in conjunction with the Ordre des avocats du Niger,
and operated from the LexUM
servers.
4. Cooperation and the Free Access to Law Movement
The Free Access to Law
Movement (FALM), established in 2002, is a loose affiliation of 26 legal
information institutes as of 2009.
The group of LIIs associated with the LII
(Cornell), LexUM and AustLII made the initial attempts to establish
collaboration and organisation
to further free access to law globally, but FALM
has become a broader grouping since then.
The ‘Law via
Internet’
Conferences[52]
have been the principal means by which this cooperation was established. The
first was hosted by AustLII in 1997, as were the 2nd
(1999), 3rd (2001) and 5th
(2003). LexUM/CanLII hosted the 4th (2002), French
organisations (as FrLII[53])
hosted the 6th (2004), PacLII the
7th (2006), LexUM/CanLII the
8th (2007) and the Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche
dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) in Florence the 9th
(2008). SAFLII will host the 10th Conference in 2009.
Many of the conference papers are available
online[54] and
comprise a considerable resource on legal information systems.
The Free
Access to Law Movement (FALM) meets annually during the Conference, and operates
by email between Conferences. The first
sustained attempt to build some form of
international network took place at Cornell in July
2000,[55] involving
participants from the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and South Africa. The
expression ‘WorldLII’ was first used
there to describe a
collaborative LII portal. The FALM was then formed at the 2002 Conference in
Montreal, and adopted the Declaration on Free Access to
Law[56] (see
Appendix for text). The Declaration has had some amendments since then.
Membership is by invitation, with members nominating
new candidates, and
consensus required. The membership criteria are not fixed but involve adherence
to, and support of, the Declaration
and activities similar to (but not
necessarily identical with) a LII. At the 2007 meeting initial steps were taken
to turn the ‘Movement’
into a more formally constituted
‘Association’ (FALA), but these have not yet proceeded further.
The membership of FALM has expanded beyond the initial members discussed
above, and the four portals discussed below, to include other
national LIIs from
Argentina, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Mexico, The Philippines, Spain and
Thailand. The 26 members are listed
in Appendix 1.
The principal aim of the
FALM, re-affirmed at its 2007 meeting, is the provision of assistance by its
members to organisations who
wish to provide free access to law in countries
where that has not yet occurred. This has been successful, as outlined above. It
also provides mutual support to organisations already providing free access to
law who wish to join the FALM. The Declaration recognises
‘the primary
role of local initiatives in free access publishing of their own national legal
information’. A second aim
stated in the Declaration is that ‘All
legal information institutes are encouraged to participate in regional or global
free
access to law networks.’ As the Declaration puts it, the aim is
‘To cooperate in order to achieve these goals and, in
particular, to
assist organisations in developing countries to achieve these goals, recognising
the reciprocal advantages that all
obtain from access to each other's
law.’ The main activities of the FALM, in light of these aims, have been
sharing of software,
technical expertise and experience on policy questions such
as privacy issues.
5. Development of LII networks 2002-
The Declaration
encourages LIIs to ‘participate in regional or global free access to law
networks.’ Before 2002 there
were some national and regional LIIs, but no
multi-LII networks. BAILII and PacLII were multi-country regional systems from
inception
(and SAFLII became one), but did not involve material from other LIIs.
The World Legal Information
Institute[57]
(WorldLII), launched in 2002, was the first multi-LII site, initially providing
search accesses to the databases from AustLII, BAILII,
PacLII, HKLII and CanLII,
and from South Africa (before SAFLII was formed). The Free Access to Law
Movement adopted it as their joint
portal in
2002.[58] It has three
main aspects: as a portal making multiple LIIs simultaneously searchable; its
own databases; and its catalog and web
search. WorldLII is organized primarily
by country, providing from the page for each country in the world as many
complementary legal
research facilities (databases, catalog, and web-search
facilities) as possible.
WorldLII’s networking of multiple LIIs makes
it the largest free access legal research facility on the Internet because it
makes
simultaneously searchable the databases provided by the other
collaborating LIIs. By 2009 this comprises nearly 800 databases from
over 100
countries in all continents. Databases from the LIIs that cooperate most closely
with AustLII are the principal source of
the databases searchable via WorldLII,
mainly because the use of a common search engine (AustLII’s Sino) makes
technical cooperation
easier to achieve. The databases from 40 countries of the
Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) (discussed below) are another
significant
searchable component. WorldLII also includes over 700,000 US Circuit
Court of Appeals cases republished from public US sources, and
access to the US
Code provided by the LII (Cornell). Databases from Droit Francophone are not at
present available (see below), and
the continuing availability of CanLII’s
databases is unresolved. WorldLII’s own databases are primarily 22
databases
of decisions of international Courts and Tribunals in the
International Courts and Tribunal
Library[59] (the
largest such searchable collection available via the Internet), and some
databases in the Privacy
Law Library.[60] A
new element of WorldLII in 2009 is the creation of ‘virtual
databases’ for each country in the world, drawing on the
law journal
articles, treaties, international court decisions and other globally-relevant
content available through WorldLII to create
country-specific databases.
The
WorldLII Catalog[61]
is the largest law-specific catalog on the Internet, with links to over 15,000
law-related websites concerning every country, most
international institutions,
and a subject index. It is one of the few global law catalogs still being
maintained (though only minimally
at present) in the face of the popularity of
search engines. It is biased toward English-language content. The web search
facility
uses AustLII’s web spider to make searchable the full texts of as
many sites as possible in the
Catalog,[62] but its
scope and interface is at present inferior to commercial search engines.
WorldLII (and CommonLII and AsianLII discussed below)
also provide a ‘Law
on Google’ facility for each country, which translates a search in
WorldLII’s Sino syntax into
an effective search over Google, limited to
material from the country concerned and limited to legal content. This facility
may be
generalized to other search engines in future.
WorldLII is not yet a
global legal information service. It provides a primarily English language
interface, and its databases are
primarily in English, but with some content in
other languages. The collaborating LIIs that provide its databases are drawn
mainly
from the Pacific, Asia, Australasia, Africa, the USA and South America.
Apart from the UK and Ireland, its European coverage is as
yet
slight.
LawCite, a free access global citator for cases and other legal
materials[63] is the
most recent development related to WorldLII. It is based largely on
collaboration between the same group of LIIs, using citator
software developed
by AustLII which uses heuristics to recognise references to over 15,000 Law
Report and journal series. It was
released for public access in December 2008,
and now provides citation records for almost three million cases and some
journal articles.
The records are updated daily.
The Global Legal Information Network
(GLIN),[64] operated
by the US Library of Congress since at least
2001,[65] is a
database primarily of official texts of legislation, but also including treaties
and, for some countries, judicial decisions
and other complementary legal
sources. They are contributed by governmental agencies and international
organizations, which provide
to GLIN the full texts of their published documents
to the database in their original languages. GLIN's member countries are
predominantly
from Latin America but include quite a few other countries (e.g.
Romania, South Korea and Spain). Each document is accompanied by
a summary in
English and, in many cases in additional languages, plus subject terms selected
from the multilingual index to GLIN,
prepared by Library of Congress Staff. Over
150,000 items have been contributed. All summaries are available to the public,
and public
access to full texts is also available for 25 of the 40 jurisdictions
covered by GLIN. Searching is the only access mechanism, but
allows results to
be sorted by relevance, by date or by jurisdiction. The translations of
summaries of legislation in English and
other languages are probably the main
value of GLIN, at least to an English-speaking audience. In 2007 the GLIN
databases of abstracts
were added to WorldLII’s search scope (and a
facility to browse by country or year was added), and GLIN became a FALM member.
This gave WorldLII a South and Central American dimension previously lacking, as
well as additional legislative databases from other
countries in Asia, the
Middle-East and Europe.
A linguistic focus to the creation of a multi-country
LII was taken in 2003 by LexUM’s development of Droit
Francophone,[66]
the French language legal portal of the Organisation internationale de la
francophonie[67]
(OIF). It is ‘multi-LII’ because it includes JuriBurkina content.
Its databases of over 4000 texts include legislation
from 21 countries from
across the whole francophonie, and case law from 10. A Web-based interface
allows for the remote decentralized
management of its content by representatives
from each of the national structure in charge of access to law, who meet
annually sponsored
by
OIF.[68] It is now
being reorganized by
OIF.[69] Droit
Francophone also provides a catalog of more than 4000 legal websites concerning
law of the francophonie that are evaluated
and commented, and a Web search
engine indexing those websites.
In 2005 AustLII developed the Commonwealth Legal Information Institute
(CommonLII)[70]
covering Commonwealth and Common Law countries. It was in some respects an
English-language response to LexUM (‘droit Anglophone’
is its
nickname). CommonLII relies principally upon the content of existing LIIs
(AustLII, BAILII, CyLaw,
CanLII,[71] PacLII,
HKLII, NZLII, SAFLII and ZamLII), but also added over 50 databases from 20
additional countries, which do not yet have their
own LIIs (mainly in South Asia
and the Caribbean). The South Asian databases provide nearly 200,000 cases. Part
of CommonLII’s
purpose is to encourage new LII development in these
countries and regions. A major addition in 2008 was the 125,000 cases from the
English Reports
1220-1873,[72] the
basis of the common law world-wide. CommonLII is supported by a range of
Commonwealth
institutions,[73]
including the Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting, the Commonwealth Secretariat
Legal and Constitutional Division, the Institute of
Advanced Legal
Studies,[74] Financial
support for CommonLII has been primarily from Australian sources to date, but
the Commonwealth Secretariat is now funding
a Commonwealth-wide Criminal Law
Library on CommonLII, using virtual database techniques.
The Asian Legal Information Institute
(AsianLII)[75]
developed by AustLII in 2006, drew on CommonLII’s content (for 8 Asian
Commonwealth countries), PacLII (for Papua New Guinea)
and HKLII (for Hong
Kong), and is therefore a multi-LII network. However, most of its content
comprises databases from 18 additional
Asian countries which do not yet have
local LIIs. AsianLII provides over 200 databases[76]
from 27 of these 28 countries in ASEAN, Myanmar excepted (Afghanistan to Japan;
Mongolia to Timor-Leste). It also includes databases
from regional organisations
such as APEC, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Development
Law Organisation (IDLO).
A principal aim of AsianLII, and the reason it has
AusAID funding in relation to ten developing countries, is to assist development
of new local LIIs, some of which are likely to emerge from AsianLII’s
‘Country
Supporting
Institutions’[77]
in these countries. AsianLII is supported by many of the regional law
organisations[78]
(including LAWASIA, the Inter-Pacific Bar Association, APEC, ADB and
IDLO),[79] with
funding from Australian sources including AusAID.
The development of
CommonLII and AsianLII also significantly expanded the content searchable via
WorldLII. Cooperation between the
thirteen LIIs and FALM members that
collaborate in the provision of
WorldLII[80] has
resulted in their joint provision of nearly 900 databases from over 100
countries, searchable from one location. WorldLII is
best seen as the largest
portal to this collaborative network, but only one of a number of such portals
– regional, linguistic/political,
translation-based, and potentially from
other perspectives.
The number of databases provided by all of the LIIs of
the Free Access to Law Movement has been growing rapidly ever since 2002. While
the databases from many of the countries are quite small, they are very
substantial from others. From Canada, Australia, Hong Kong,
India, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand
and many Pacific Island countries,
what the LIIs offer is very substantial and
includes content not available from commercial legal publishers. Furthermore,
WordLII,
as the global portal of the LIIs, compares well with its two commercial
counterparts (the international portals of LexisNexis and
Westlaw) in terms of
scope of countries covered, though not necessarily in depth for individual
countries.
The LII networks provided through WorldLII, CommonLII and AsianLII
utilise a replication / synchronisation
model.[81] A copy of
all LII data is held in Sydney by AustLII, replicated daily using
rsync.[82] Searches
over the locally stored concordances at AustLII producing rapid search results,
and users are then returned to the databases
on the originating LII when they
choose to access a particular search result. The PacLII mirror at AustLII is the
one seen by users
outside the Pacific, due to slow access speeds to the Vanuatu
server. Some LII content is also mirrored at other LIIs in the network.
An issue
currently under discussion is that CanLII prefers a federated search model (with
searches sent to cooperating systems) rather
than a replication/synchronization
model, but AustLII considers that federated search cannot be operated with fast
enough access
speeds or useful relevance ranking.
6. Beyond the LIIs: How global is the Free Access to Law Movement?
The membership of the
Free Access to Law Movement has to date been drawn primarily from LIIs based in
academic institutions. However,
recent members have included GLIN (US Library of
Congress), SAFLII (now based at the South African Constitutional Court, and
operated
by its Trust), the Kenya Law Reports (a semi-government body) and the
Thai Law Reform Commission. The key condition for government-based
members in
the Declaration (as amended in 2007) is that they ‘Do not impede others
from obtaining public legal information
from its sources and publishing
it’. In other words, a government body cannot be a member if it provides
free access to law
in a way that monopolises the publication of that information
or supports such monopoly publication. The key test is whether republication
of
government information is allowed. Freedom to republish official sources is at
the heart of the Free Access to Law Movement, and
essential for the operation of
LIIs.
Examples of multi-sourced free access government-provided national
legal information systems include Legifrance[83]
(France), FINLEX[84]
(Finland), Jersey Legal
Information
Board[85]
(Jersey), InfoLeg[86]
(Argentina), Albanian
Official Publications
Centre[87]
(Albania) and BelgiumLex[88]
(Belgian government portal). Perhaps the most outstanding example, EUR-Lex,[89]
comes from a regional organisation, the European Union. The few examples in Asia
includeLawNet Sri
Lanka[90] and
Mongolia’s Legal Unified Information
System.[91] None of
them are yet members of the FALM, nor have they yet been invited to join. It is
not certain that all could do so, as their
positions on the question of not
impeding republication of government information may vary, and some may also
have difficulty in
becoming members of a non-government organisation.
Nevertheless, it is clear that there is far more free access to law than is
provided
by the current members of the Free Access to Law Movement.
As at the
end of 2008, the Free Access to Law Movement only includes a minority of the
organisations who are potentially its members,
and whose involvement could make
it more significant both politically and technically. The most obvious field for
expansion of membership
is in those government providers of free access to law
from multiple sources who also meet the republication criteria, as discussed
above. Other possible non-government members, not yet invited to join, may come
from University-based free access providers of primary
materials (for example AltLaw[92]
(Columbia University and the University of Colorado law schools), from some
repositories of legal scholarship (for example, bePress
Legal
Repository[93]), and
from developers of new collaborative forms of legal scholarship such as
Wikipedia (which has extensive law
content[94]) or
(if it develops) JurisPedia.[95]
FALM membership is slowly expanding, and in 2008 its new members were
Juridicas[96] (UNAM,
Autonomous University of Mexico), the Thai Law Reform Commission, IIjusticia
(Argentina), Droit.org (France), Jersey Legal
Information Board, Ugandan Legal
Information Institute (ULII) and the Institute of Law and Technology (Autonomous
University of Barcelona,
Spain).
The geographical scope of FALM membership is
nevertheless as yet far more limited than the spread of free access to law as an
idea
and a reality, being concentrated on the Anglophone and Commonwealth
countries, the francophonie, and parts of Asia. While Africa
is well-covered
(from both the anglophone and francophone directions), Latin America, the Middle
East, most of Europe and the states
of the USA are not yet involved. This is a
challenge for a movement which is potentially global, but also indicates that
the Free
Access to Law Movement and the development of LIIs may yet be far from
reaching its maximum impact. One future direction for the
LII networks, and the
Free Access to Law Movement, is to provide a global alternative to the expanding
global reach of the current
legal publishing duopoly. In helping to provide and
sustain better access to law in many countries, the FALM can encourage
organisations
in those countries to join in a global project that supports
economic progress, the rule of law and democracy.
7. Policy tensions in free access to law
There are some disagreements between those who
advocate free access to law about what is the best strategy for long-term
success.
Most FALM members would be likely to reject Jon Bing’s argument
in favour of state-run legal information services that only
provide a limited
amount of free
access.[97] I have
described it as a ‘statist model’ and likely to fail because it is
based around monopolies over legal
information.[98] Tom
Bruce of the LII (Cornell) has also been pessimistic about the long-term role of
LIIs in providing free access to law, arguing
for a radically decentralised
model where the courts and legislatures will publish everything themselves, for
free, and according
to
standards.[99] This
argument fails to show that third party republication is doomed, or unnecessary,
only that publication at source is
good.[100] As yet,
the future of LIIs may not be certain, but has not been disproved
either.
Another difference of opinion, although not as well articulated, is
over the value to the diffusion of free access to law of creating
regional or
linguistic multi-country LIIs where they may not be direct local participation
from all of the countries covered, or
at least not initially. Must all
initiatives be ‘bottom up’ to be valuable, or can ‘top
down’ initiatives
sometimes result in engaging local participation, with
the eventual result of decentralization and new LIIs? Or might this stultify
local initiatives? AustLII’s approach, particularly with AsianLII, has
been an explicitly ‘top down’ approach (it
included databases from
27 of 28 countries and territories from inception), but with an equally explicit
goal of engaging ‘bottom
up’ local LII development. Both approaches
are agreed on the value of maximum decentralisation to local LIIs: it is a
question
of how many ways you can get there.
Different preferences in models
of LII networking, between a replication / synchronisation model and a federated
search model, have
previously been discussed.
8. Citations and standards
Although it has not been a matter of the formal
development of a standard, there is widespread common usage of the same type of
‘LII
citation’ of the format ‘[<year of publication>]
<designator> <sequential number>’. The
‘designator’
is an abbreviation for name of the court or tribunal
(either designated by it, or applied by the LII with its
agreement[101]), and
the sequential number is that of the decisions available for publication from
the court for that year. So ‘ [1998] HCA 1’ was the first decision
of the High Court of Australia for 1998 released for publication (and in fact
the first decision published
using this system). This method of neutral
citations for decisions published on LIIs is used by AustLII, BAILII, PacLII,
SAFLII,
and NZLII, and for the case databases originating on CommonLII, AsianLII
and WorldLII. In Australian, English, Singaporean Courts,
and New
Zealand’s Supreme Court, this method of citation has been adopted
officially by the courts, and the expression ‘Court-designated
citations’ is probably best used to describe these citations (see also
references to ‘neutral citation’ in Wikipedia
‘case
citations’[102]).
These LIIs have also unilaterally applied these citations to the decisions they
publish, as publishers usually do, and in some
cases have retro-fitted them to
collections of old cases (in which case the ‘year’ is the year in
which a court made
a decision). CanLII has developed its own slightly different
system of neutral
citations.[103]
There has been some pooling of parallel citation tables so as to facilitate
development of automated hypertext linking between LIIs,
but this has not
advanced far. Individual LIIs have made considerable progress in enhancing their
own data through development of
systems to recognise and automate parallel
citations, such as CanLII’s RefLex.[104]
9. Funding free access to law
The main constraining
factor of the non-government LIIs is funding: free to use, but not free to
build. Every LII looks after the
funding of its own system. The models on which
LIIs are funded vary a great deal. AustLII has a ‘multi-contributor’
model,
with nearly 200 institutional contributors, plus individual contributors
(mainly lawyers). BAILII is similar in having multiple contributors,
though
fewer. The LII (Cornell) annually solicits funds from the public. Most LIIs have
had a considerable deal of academic funding
and academic institutional support
(including HKLII, PacLII, AustLII, LawPhil and BAILII). CanLII is funded
primarily by the Canadian
legal profession: every Canadian lawyer provides over
C$20 per year via their professional associations. Other LIIs have not been
able
to replicate this.
International aid and development agencies have made
significant contributions to the development costs of PacLII, SAFLII, Droit
Francophone,
AsianLII and WorldLII. Strategic alliances with some legal
publishers have helped AustLII. A small LII like CyLaw is a personal project.
NZLII still lives on ‘the smell of an oily rag’ (a NZ expression)
and help from other LIIs, while it searches for longer-term
funds, as does
CommonLII. Kenya Law Reports is trying to move from a model combining government
funding with subscription income
to one which does without subscriptions for its
online resources.
There is no single source likely to fund global free
access to law long-term, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
It
has been done with ever-widening scope for over a decade. There is not one
formula, but as with many other aspects of open content,
there are many
non-business models by which numerous stakeholders can be engaged.
There
are as yet few government-based FALM members, but government-based
‘LIIs’ face different funding challenges. GLIN
is unusual in having
obtained sustained government funding. While there are many individual courts
and legislatures who publish their
own output for free access (often from their
own budgets), there are relatively few governments who fund multi-sourced free
access
national legal information systems (the usage of ‘LII’ in
this article), and they are mainly from Europe and some in
Latin America
(examples are given above). In many developing countries, there are no funds
available for development of online legislation
or case law unless it is
provided by international aid agencies such as the World Bank, Asian Development
Bank, CIDA or AusAID. In
recent years the World Bank has funded major free
access systems in Sri Lanka and Mongolia (mentioned above). The sustainability
of these free access facilities, particularly in terms of updating data, often
becomes problematic once the initial aid funding ceases.
Where this happens,
engagement with the FALM members, and the assistance they can provide, may be
valuable. In the past, aid and
development agencies have often invested
considerable funds into national legal information systems, without requiring
that free-access
systems be developed, and sometimes requiring to the contrary
that they adopt ‘pay for use’ models in the hope they will
become
self-funding. The FALM and its members need to help convince aid and development
agencies that free access models can be more
sustainable, and socially
beneficial, in developing countries than closed ‘pay for use’
models.
10. Internet search engines, ‘open content’ and LIIs
The policy of LIIs stated
in the Declaration concerning republication of government information does not
mean that a LII must declare
its content to be ‘open content’
(available for re-use by anyone), but only that it must not hinder others from
obtaining
the data from its official sources and republishing it. In some
countries where doctrines of Crown Copyright still apply (for example,
Australia), a LII is not at liberty to permit users to reproduce its data for
all purposes. LawPhil is the only LII to provide all
its data via a Creative
Commons licence at this point. CanLII has quite liberal Terms of
Use[105] for
re-use of data on the CanLII site, possible because of Canada’s Reproduction of Federal
Law Order.[106]
For some LIIs, the question of re-use is further complicated by privacy and
strategic issues. Each LII has different views about
the need to protect its own
databases, often for privacy reasons with case
law[107] (this
varies between jurisdictions), but more generally to avoid its
often-considerable investment of public monies in collecting
data from disparate
sources and adding value to it.
The search engines, and networks, of the LIIs
still matter in a post-Google world. General Internet search engines such as
Google
do not provide what the LII networks (or individual LIIs) provide. One
reason is that many LIIs use the Robots Exclusion
Standard[108]
(see also The Web Robots
Pages[109]) to
exclude spiders/robots from at least their case law (variously on privacy policy
grounds, as required by data sources, and as
required by privacy laws). They
include CanLII, BAILII, AustLII, NZLII, HKLII and the networked LIIs. SAFLII
allows web spider access
to some cases, and LawPhil provides ‘open
content’ under a Creative Commons licence. Some LIIs exclude robots from
all
data (on strategic and technical grounds). See the robots.txt file at the
root of any
LII,[110] plus its
privacy policy, for individual LII details. Networking LIIs can also add many
forms of organisation of the data shared between
LIIs that general search
engines don’t yet provide, such as restricting the scope of searches to
legislation from many jurisdictions.
The long-term relationship between search
engines and LIIs is still developing, with unresolved questions such as the
effect of search
engines on the sustainability of LII value-adding to raw legal
data, from which search engines profit. At this point, ‘free
access’
does not necessarily mean ‘free to be found through any search
engine’.
Appendix 1: Members of the Free Access to Law Movement
AsianLII – Asian Legal Information Institute
AustLII – Australasian Legal Information Institute
BAILII – British and Irish Legal Information Institute
CanLII – Canadian Legal Information Institute
Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations, UK
CommonLII – Commonwealth Legal Information Institute
CyLaw, Cyprus
Droit francophone
Droit.org, France
GLIN – Global Legal Information Network
HKLII – Hong Kong Legal Information Institute
IRLII – Irish Legal Information Initiative
Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas UNAM (IIJ-UNAM), Mexico
Institute of Law and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
IIjusticia, Argentina
ITTIG – Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques, Italy
Jersey Legal Information Board
JuriBurkina, Burkina Faso
JuriNiger, Niger
Juristisches Internetprojekt Saarbrücken, Germany
KenyaLaw – Kenya Law Reports
LawPhil, Philippine
LII Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School), USA
LexUM – Law Faculty - University of Montreal, Canada
NZLII – New Zealand Legal Information Institute
Office of the Council of State, Thailand
PacLII – Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute
SAFLII – Southern African Legal Information Institute
ULII – Ugandan Legal Information Institute
WorldLII – World Legal Information Institute
Appendix 2: Declaration on Free Access to Law
Legal information institutes of the world, meeting in Montreal, declare that:
Public legal information means legal information produced
by public bodies that have a duty to produce law and make it public. It
includes
primary sources of law, such as legislation, case law and treaties, as well as
various secondary (interpretative) public
sources, such as reports on
preparatory work and law reform, and resulting from boards of inquiry. It also
includes legal documents
created as a result of public funding.
Publicly
funded secondary (interpretative) legal materials should be accessible for free
but permission to republish is not always
appropriate or possible. In particular
free access to legal scholarship may be provided by legal scholarship
repositories, legal
information institutes or other means.
Legal information
institutes:
All legal information
institutes are encouraged to participate in regional or global free access to
law networks.
Therefore, the legal information institutes agree:
This declaration was made by legal information institutes meeting in Montreal in 2002, as amended at meetings in Sydney (2003), Paris (2004) and Montreal (2007).
[1] Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales and Co-Director, Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), email graham@austlii.edu.au. Some parts of this Chapter were previously published on the GlobaLex website. Helpful comments have been received from Andrew Mowbray, Philip Chung, Pierre-Paul Lemyre, Joe Ury, Kerry Anderson, Kevin Pun, Abdul Paliwala, Martin Backes and Jill Matthews (who also assisted with editing), but responsibility for content remains with the author.
[2] G. Greenleaf ‘Jon Bing and the history of computerised legal research – some missing links’ in O. Torvund and L. Bygrave (eds.) Et tilbakeblikk på fremtiden (‘Looking back at the future’) 61-75, (Oslo: Institutt for Rettsinformatikk 2004)
[3] For a summation of these ideals, see D. Poulin, ‘Open access to law in developing countries’ First Monday vol. 9, no 12, 6 December 2004; an early statement is G. Greenleaf, A. Mowbray, G. King and P. van Dijk, ‘Public access to law via internet: the Australasian Legal Information Institute’, Journal of Law & Information Science, 1995, Vol 6, Issue 1.
[4] D. Poulin, A. Mowbray and P. Lemyre ‘Free access to law and open source software’ in Handbook of Research on Open Source Software (Hershey and New Yok: Information Science Reference 2007)
[5] Aust:II, Sino Free Text Search Engine AustLII Web Page
http://www.austlii.edu.au/techlib/software/sino/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[6] ‘Apache Lucene – Overview’ http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[7] G. Greenleaf ‘Part II: A-Z of legal information institutes’ in ‘Legal Information Institutes and the Free Access to Law Movement’, GlobaLex 2008 http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[8] http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex (visited 15 April 2009)
[9] http://www.zamlii.ac.zm/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[10] http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex (visited 15 April 2009)
[11] http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Main_Page (visited 15 April 2009); Wex is developed in part from the LII (Cornell)’s previous ‘Law About ...’ series.
[12] http://ceri.law.cornell.edu/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[13] http://www.austlii.edu.au/ (visited 15 April 2009); University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and University of New South Wales (UNSW)
[14] G. Greenleaf, A. Mowbray and P. van Dijk, ‘Representing and using legal knowledge in integrated decision support systems - DataLex WorkStations’, Artificial Intelligence and Law, (1995) vol 3, nos 1-2, pp 97-124; and see AustLII AustLII Publications with links to over 50 publications since 1992 including DataLex Project publications.
[15] http://www.austlii.edu.au/databases.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[16] http://portsea.austlii.edu.au/pit/ (visited 15 April 2009); New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia
[17] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[18] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/lawreform/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[19] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[20] For example, the Taxation Law Library
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/tax/
[21] http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/index_fr.php?lang=en (visited 15 April 2009)
[22] See http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/publication.epl?lang=en for extensive LexUM publications.
[23] http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/index.html; for others see
http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/partners.epl?lang=en
[24] http://www.canlii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[25] D. Poulin ‘CanLII – How the Bar and Academia can make free access to the Law a reality’, Proc. 3rd Law via the Internet 2001, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, 2001; Poulin D, Salvas B and Pelletier F, ‘La diffusion du droit canadien sur Internet’, 102 R. du N. 189, 2000.
[26] http://www.canlii.org/en/databases.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[27] http://www.canlii.org/en/info/reflex.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[28] http://www.austlii.edu.au/techlib/software/sino/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[29] http://www.bailii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[30] http://www.paclii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[31] http://www.hklii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[32] http://www.saflii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[33] http://www.nzlii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[34] http://www.bailii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[35] http://www.bailii.org/databases.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[36] http://www.bailii.org/openlaw/introduction.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[37] http://www.paclii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[38] See Hamilton L ‘A presentation on PacLII’ (PPTs) 8th Law via Internet Conference, Montreal, 2007; Blake R ‘Islands in Time: The Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PACLII)’ Proc. 4th Law via Internet Conference, Montreal, 2002
[39] http://www.hklii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[40] Greenleaf G, Chung P, Mowbray A, Chow, K P, and Pun K H 'The Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII): Its role in free access to global law via the Internet' (2002) Vol 32 Pt 2 Hong Kong Law Journal 401-427 Sweet and Maxwell Asia (available via SSRN)
[41] Pun K H, Ip G, Chong C F, Chan V, Chow K P, Hui L, Tsang W W, Chan H W ‘Processing Legal Documents in the Chinese-Speaking World: the Experience of HKLII’ Proc 3rd Law via Internet Conference, AustLII 2003; Pun K H, Chan E, Chow K P, Chong C F, Ma J, Hui L, Tsang W W, Chan H W, ‘Cross-referencing for bilingual electronic legal documents in HKLII’, 6th Law via Internet Conference, Paris, 2004
[42] http://www.hkclic.org/en/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[43] http://www.saflii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[44] J. Montgomery ‘Free access to primary legal documents in Southern Africa’ 15(1) Organisation of SA Law Libraries (OSALL) Newsletter, Nov 2004 (available via OSALL Archive)
[45] K. Anderson ‘The Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII) - Achievements & Challenges’ [PPT] 8th Law via Internet Conference, Montreal, 2007
[46] http://www.nzlii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[47] D. Buckingham ‘What’s in a name?: New Zealand and the growth of free on-line legal information’ [2005] CompLRes 2
http://www.worldlii.org/au/other/CompLRes/toc-B.html; 7th Law via Internet Conference, Vila, Vanuatu
[48] http://www.cylaw.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[49] http://www.juriburkina.org/juriburkina/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[50] C. Apikul ‘Making legal information freely available – JuriBurkina, Burkina Faso’, International Open Source Network Case Study, 2006
[51] http://juriniger.lexum.umontreal.ca/juriniger/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[52] http://www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/conference/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[53] http://www.frlii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[54] They are variously in an AustLII database (1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005)
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/CompLRes/, on the FrLII website (2004) http://www.frlii.org/, or on LexUM (2002, 2008)
[55] LII Workshop on Emerging Global Public Legal Information Standards hosted by the LII (Cornell)
[56] http://www.worldlii.org/worldlii/declaration/, also called the ‘Montreal Declaration’
[57] http://www.worldlii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[58] Poulin op cit
[59] http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/ (visited 15 April 2009) See discussion at G. Greenleaf, P. Chung and A. Mowbray ‘Responding to the fragmentation of international law – WorldLII's International Courts & Tribunals Project’ Canadian Law Library Review, 2005, Vol. 30 (1), 13- 21.
[60] http://www.worldlii.org/int/special/privacy/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[61] http://www.worldlii.org/catalog/270.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[62] G. Greenleaf, P. Chung and A. Mowbray ‘Emerging global networks for free access to law: WorldLII’s strategies 2002-2005’ (2007) 4:4 SCRIPT-ed 319
[63] http://www.worldlii.org/LawCite/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[64] http://www.glin.gov/search.action (visited 15 April 2009)
[65] D. Prescott ‘The UN and the Global Legal Information Network’, (2005) 4 UN Chronicle Online Edition
http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2005/issue4/0405p57.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[66] http://droit.francophonie.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[67] http://www.francophonie.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[68] P. Lemyre ‘Droit francophone : de catalogue à portail’, 6th Law via Internet Conference, Paris, 2004, on FrLII website
http://www.frlii.org/article.php3?id_article=168 (not accessible 15 April 2009); Lemyre P, Coulibaly B and Viens F ‘Free access to law in the French-speaking world: A renewed strategy’, 2004 UTS Law Review 5
[69] As at 15 April 2009 the site is not accessible, and a notice on the site states ‘Dear Internet, The International Organization of la Francophonie is doing maintenance work on its portal Droit Francophone. For this reason, the site will be unavailable during this period of work, but our teams are working for a rapid return to normal operation. We thank in advance for your understanding and your loyalty’ (Translation from French by Google).
[70] http://www.commonlii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[71] Not available at the time of writing due to technical issues.
[72] http://www.commonlii.org/int/cases/EngR/
[73] http://www.commonlii.org/commonlii/sponsors/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[74] Greenleaf G, Mowbray A and Chung P ‘Building a commons for the common law – The Commonwealth Legal Information Institute (CommonLII) after two years progress’ Proc. Meeting of Senior Officials of Commonwealth Law Ministries, Marlborough House, London, October 2007 at
http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~graham/publications/2007/CommonLII_SOM.pdf; Greenleaf G, Chung P and Mowbray A ‘A new home online for Commonwealth law: A proposal for a CommonLII’ 2004 (2) The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT) at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2004_2/greenleafmowbrayandchung/
[75] http://www.asianlii.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[76] http://www.asianlii.org/databases.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[77] http://www.asianlii.org/asianlii/sponsors/#country_supporting_institutions (visited 15 April 2009)
[78] http://www.asianlii.org/asianlii/sponsors/#rsi (visited 15 April 2009)
[79] G. Greenleaf, P. Chung and A. Mowbray ‘Challenges in improving access to Asian laws: the Asian Legal Information Institute (Asian LII)’ [2007] UNSWLRS 42 (on bepress), in Proceedings of the 4th Asian Law Institute Conference, Jakarta, May 2007 at http://law.bepress.com/unswwps/flrps/art42/ (visited 15 April 2009); G. Greenleaf ‘Free access to Japanese and Asian law – The launch of AsianLII in Japan’ [2007] UNSWLRS 60 (on bepress), presentation at the Launch of the Asian Legal Information Institute in Japan, 4 August 2007, Meiji University, Kanda, Tokyo, at http://law.bepress.com/unswwps/flrps/art60/ (visited 15 April 2009).
[80] AustLII, BAILII, CyLaw, CanLII, GLIN, LawPhil, LII (Cornell), PacLII, HKLII, NZLII, Thai Law Reform Commission, SAFLII and ZamLII.
[81] A. Mowbray, G. Greenleaf, P. Chung and A. Austin ‘Improving stability and performance of an international network of free access legal information systems’, Journal of Information Law & Technology (JILT), 2007; or more briefly G Greenleaf, A Mowbray and P Chung ‘Networking LIIs: how free access to law fits together’ Internet Newsletter for Lawyers, March/April 2007
[82] http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[83] http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[84] http://www.finlex.fi/en/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[85] http://www.jerseylaw.je/Home/WhatsNew/default.aspx (visited 15 April 2009)
[86] http://infoleg.mecon.gov.ar/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[87] http://www.legjislacionishqiptar.gov.al/ (not available 15 April 2009)
[88] http://www.belgiumlex.be/V2/belgiumlex/website/en/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[89] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[90] http://www.lawnet.lk/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[91] http://www.legalinfo.mn/pages/1/page72.php?vmenuclick=72 (visited 15 April 2009)
[92] http://www.altlaw.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[93] http://law.bepress.com/repository/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[94] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law (visited 15 April 2009)
[95] http://www.jurispedia.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[96] http://www.juridicas.unam.mx/infjur/leg/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[97] J. Bing ‘The policies of legal information services: A perspective of three decades’ in L. Bygrave (ed), Yulex 2003, (Oslo: Institutt for rettsinformatik / Norwegian Research Centre for Computers and Law 2003), pp 37–55.
[98] Greenleaf, 2004 op cit
[99] T. Bruce ‘Tears shed over Peer Gynt's onion: Some thoughts on the constitution of public legal information providers’, 2000 (2) The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT); BILETA Conference, 2000; T. Bruce ‘Public legal information: Focus and future’, 2000 (1) Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT)
[100] Greenleaf G ‘Full free access to law: Global policy aspects’ (PPTs) 6th Law via Internet Conference, Paris, November 2004
[101] For an AustLII example, see http://www.austlii.edu.au/techlib/standards/designators.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[102] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_citation (visited 15 April 2009)
[103] http://www.canlii.org/en/info/canliicite.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[104] http://www.canlii.org/en/info/reflex.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[105] http://www.canlii.org/en/info/faq.html#5.2 (visited 15 April 2009)
[106] http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/regu/si-97-5/latest/si-97-5.html (visited 15 April 2009)
[107] Frédéric Pelletier ‘L'accès aux jugements / Access to Judgments’ [PPT] 8th Law via Internet Conference, Montreal, 2007
[108] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt (visited 15 April 2009)
[109] http://www.robotstxt.org/ (visited 15 April 2009)
[110] http://www.austlii.edu.au/robots.txt (visited 15 April 2009)
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