Free Access to Law and Open Source Software

Abstract

Law consists of legislation, judicial decisions, and interpretative material. Public legal information means legal information produced by public bodies that have a duty to produce law and make it public. Such information includes the law itself (so-called primary materials) as well as various secondary (interpretative) public sources such as reports on preparatory work and law reform and resulting from boards of inquiry and available scholarly writing. The free access to law movement is a set of international projects that share a common vision to promote and facilitate open access to public legal information. The objectives of this chapter are to outline the free access to law movement, to set out the philosophies and principles behind this, and to discuss the role that open source software has played both in terms of its use and development.

Law Belongs to the People: Access to Law and Justice

“…Most of the LIIs are independent from their governments and often use the technologies developed within the FALM community 17 . In October 2002, at the 4th Conference "Law Via the Internet" in Montréal, legal information institutes from all around the world signed the above mentioned Declaration on Free Access to Legal Information.…”

Extending Public Law: Digital Engagement, Education and Academic Identity

“…52 Additionally, and relevant to the public law scholar, 'public legal information is part of the common heritage … and its access promotes justice and the rule of law.' 53 Thirdly, while not peer reviewed in the generally understood sense, blogs are in the public domain and therefore subject to considerable scrutiny, including by one's peers. When supported by a Twitter account, the discussion with a broad spectrum of experts and the general public can be extensivemore so than a journal article.…”