The volume deals with the developments and prespectives of free and open access to legal information. It contains the proceedings of the IX International Conference "Law via the Internet" organized in Florence by the Institute of Theory and Techniques of Legal Information of CNR (ITTIG), on 30-31 October 2008. The contributions, examining issues related to freedom of digital legal culture and knowledge, provide, at international level, a matter for reflection on the inevitable interaction between ICT and law.
Editors: G. PERUGINELLI and M. RAGONA
(EPAP, 2009; 494 pg; ISBN 9788883980589, € 40.00)
PREFAZIONE
Provision of free access to legal information worldwide has progressed considerably in the last decades: this phenomenon has its origin in the rapid development of new information and communication technologies available at relatively low cost as well as in the increasing demand of open and reliable access services to law material. The establishment of legal information institutes specifically dedicated to facilitate access to law material is the starting point of this whole process. The initiative of the Cornell University Law School in 1992 establishing a legal information institute providing free access to law on the Internet with a number of databases primarily of US federal law, was followed in 1995 by two Law Schools in Sydney, Australia, and then by the LEXUM team at the University of Montreal in Canada. The establishment of new legal information institutes in other countries has been greatly facilitated by these pioneer efforts. At the moment the Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) network gives access, through the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) portal, to over 900 databases from 130 countries and territories via the The Free Access to Law Movement (FALM). This is a loose affiliation, a decentralized and cooperative initiative of legal information institutes, formed in 2002 during the “Law via the Internet” Conference in Montreal, where the Declaration on Free Access to Law was adopted.1 The participating institutes, including government-based organizations, are a sub-set of the worldwide legal data providers, which have decided to collaborate both politically and technically in the provision of free, independent and non-profit access to law and in publishing legal information via the Internet from multiple sources. The FALM commitment is to assist organizations operating in any country which wish to provide free access to law, participate in regional or global open access to law networks, and share software, technical expertise and experience on policy questions such as privacy, while promoting and adopting standards for quality legal material production and dissemination. At the forefront the freedom to republish official sources is at the heart of the Free Access to Law Movement and essential for the operation of LIIs. The “Law via Internet” International Conferences have been the principal means by which cooperation between LIIs has been established and developed. The first was hosted in Sydney by AustLII in 1997, followed by annual conferences. The latested was held on October 30-31, 2008 in Florence, entitled “Law via the Internet: Free Access, Quality of Information, Effectiveness of Rights”,and organized by the Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of the Italian National Research Council (Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica, ITTIG-CNR, formerly called IDG, Istituto per la Documentazione Giuridica), acting as a member of the LIIs network. It was an honor and a challenge to host around 300 participants coming from 39 countries of the 5 continents as ITTIG is one of the institutions where legal informatics started in Europe, supporting free access to law without interruption since its origin. Increased use of information in the field of law has played an important role for the development of methodologies for legal data creation and access. Using this as a well-established basis, the Florence Conference focus was on digital legal information, analyzing its aspects in the light of the free digital legal culture paradigm and of the actual technological development that is shaping law. The Conference explicitly addressed the topics of quality of legal data as an essential requirement ensuring completeness and reliability of information and of access to law as a fundamental right. Full knowledge of quality legal information enables citizens to exercise their rights in a conscious and effective way: in this context the use of new technologies becomes an essential tool of democracy for the citizens of the e-society. This volume, containing the contributions of legal experts from all over the world, reflects the crucial aspects of free access to law, which are visible in all sessions of the Conference, including the following:
The Right to Access Legal Information;
A Legal Framework for Open Access to Legal Information;
Free Access to Law: Information Systems and Institutions in Europe;
The Global Scope of Free Access to Law;
ICTs and the Quality of Legal Information;
Strategic Solutions and Sustainability Models for the Diffusion and Sharing of Legal Knowledge.
Besides the invited papers presented during the Conference, the volume includes 7 accepted papers prepared by ITTIG researchers who, for Conference schedule reasons, decided not to give oral presentations. This impressive list of contributions clearly shows how the free access to law approach is fully accepted worldwide, deserving full analysis in all aspects and now enjoying a success in practice. The debate covered 4 main points. The first one is that official free access is not enough. Additional systems providing different quality services are needed as full free access requires a range of different providers and competitive republishing in the light of an anti-monopoly policy. This means that institutions providing legal data sources have a public duty to offer a copy of their output (judgments and legislation) in the most authoritative form that they can to anyone who wishes to publish their output, whether for free or for fee. Another main point regards finding a balance of the potential for commercial exploitation and users’ requirements. This is particularly relevant with reference to the question of open access to the outcome of publicly funded research. Another important issue concerns effectiveness of access and reusability of legal information. Effective access requires that most governments promote the use of technologies to improve access to law, abandoning approaches borrowed from the past like technical restrictions on the reuse of legal information. What is important is to allow and facilitate others reproducing and re-using their legal materials, removing any impediments to re-publication. Finally, international cooperation in providing free access to law is a fundamental requirement. The LIIs community, one week before the Conference, participated to an expert meeting concerning Global Co-operation on the Provision of Online Legal Information organised by the Hague Conference on Private International Law Permanent Bureau, discussing how online free resources can contribute to resolve disputes with trans-border elements. Following this meeting (further confirmed at the Florence Conference) a general consensus was reached on the need for States parties to preserve their legal materials, in order to make them available as necessary; to make historical legal material available; where possible, to provide translations in other languages, to develop multi-lingual access functionalities, and to use open standards and metadata for primary materials. The key issue that emerged from the Conference discussions is that the marketplace has changed and the ultimate goal is to reach new models of legal information distribution through equal market opportunities for legal providers so as to achieve equality, quality of justice and quality of legal services. In this context legal information is to be considered an absolutely public good on top of which everyone should be free to build. In conclusion we would like to thank the ITTIG Scientific Board as well as the Organizing Committee; in particular we want to express our appreciation and very grateful thanks to Sebastiano Faro, Enrico Francesconi and Daniela Tiscornia (our colleagues of the Program Committee), who has provided us with useful suggestions and support in preparing the Conference Program. Furthermore we are in debt to Thomas Bruce, Graham Greenleaf and Daniel Poulin for their efforts and scientific support in making the Conference a success. Finally a special thanks is extented to Simona Binazzi for her great secretarial activity and to Giuseppina Sabato and Teresa Balsamo for their precious editing work of this volume.
Ginevra Peruginelli and Mario Ragona
