Extended to 11 November 2011: Call for Papers: JURIX Workshop on Fundamental Concepts and Systematization of Law

A call for papers — with extended submission deadline of 11 November 2011 — has been issued for the JURIX 2011 Workshop on Fundamental Concepts and Systematization of Law, to be held 14 December 2011, in Vienna, Austria.

The workshop is being held in connection with JURIX 2011: The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems.

Papers for the Workshop on Fundamental Concepts and Systematization of Law are invited on the following topics:

• [...] legal rules or norms,
• legal validity,
• formation of law,
• hierarchy in legal systems,
• the basic norm and rule of recognition,
• rights and duties,
• permissions, obligations and prohibitions, [...]
• states and legal persons[,]
• [d]eductive, abductive and inductive reasoning in law,
• multi-layered reasoning,
• systematization and/or axiomatization of law[,] and
• critical perspectives on fundamental legal concepts and systematization of law.

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Anne Gardner.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law, on Simulation, Norms, and Laws

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 25 November 2011 — has been issued for a special issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law, on the topic of: Simulation, Norms, and Laws.

The editors invite:

papers concerned with the application of computer simulation, and in particular agent-based simulation, to the study of norms, normative systems (including, but not limited to, the law) and norm-governed behaviour (compliance with norms, their violation, their enforcement, etc.).

The editors of this special issue are Dr. Rosaria Conte of ISTC-CNR, Dr. Eunate Mayor of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and Professor Dr. Giovanni Sartor of Università di Bologna CIRSFID.

For more information, please see the call for papers.

Holmes on BAILII and Free Access to Law

Nick Holmes of infolaw has published his new interview with Sir Henry Brooke about the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) and its restrictions on access to case law: Judgment Day for BAILII, at the Website of the Society for Computers and Law.

Mr. Holmes has also posted a comment about the interview on his Binary Law blog — entitled BAILII: Is Free Law Enough? — to which Judith Townend has added an interesting comment.

Gastil et al. Win NCA Book Award for The Jury and Democracy

Professor Dr. John Gastil of the Penn State University Department of Communication Arts and Sciences; Dr. E. Pierre Deess of the New Jersey Institute of Technology; Dean Philip J. Weiser of the University of Colorado School of Law; and Cindy Simmons, Esq., M.A., of the Penn State University College of Communications, have been awarded the National Communication Association Group Communication Division Ernest Bormann Research Award for the Outstanding Book for 2011, for The Jury and Democracy: How Jury Deliberation Promotes Civic Engagement and Political Participation (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Danner on Transnational Law, International Law, and Open Access to Law and Legal Scholarship

Senior Associate Dean Richard A. Danner of the Duke University School of Law, has posted two new papers on open access to legal information, on SSRN:

Open Access to Legal Scholarship: Dropping the Barriers to Discourse and Dialogue (2011), forthcoming in Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology. Abstract:

This article focuses on the importance of free and open access to legal scholarship and commentary on the law. It argues that full understanding of authoritative legal texts requires access to informed commentary as well as to the texts of the law themselves, and that free and open access to legal commentary will facilitate cross-border dialogue and foster international discourse in law. The paper discusses the obligations of scholars and publishers of legal commentary to make their work as widely accessible as possible. Examples of institutional and disciplinary repositories for legal scholarship are presented, as are the possible impacts of such initiatives as the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship.

Defining International Law Librarianship in an Age of Multiplicity, Knowledge, and Open Access to Law (2011). Abstract:

Many law librarians are experts in international law and legal research. The concept of ‘international law librarianship,’ however, encompasses something more than a field of study in which a group of experts practice their profession. In the broader sense, the idea suggests a common calling, similar interests, and goals shared by librarians with a range of specialties beyond international law, working in all types of law libraries. What commonalities create and sustain the concept of international law librarianship? This paper suggests that they can be found in: law librarians’ common need to respond to the ‘multiplicity’ of information sources facing twenty-first century legal researchers; the development and nurturing of a shared base of professional knowledge; and a common commitment to work toward ensuring free and open access to legal information globally.

HT @cottinstef.

New: EDRM XML 2.0 Schema

A new version 2.0 of the EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model) XML Schema, was posted on 29 September 2011.

EDRM is a major standard for ediscovery technology. ["ediscovery" is called "edisclosure" in some jurisdictions. Both terms refer to legal rules governing the disclosure of digital information sources that may contain evidence respecting a particular civil judicial proceeding. In the U.S. federal system, these rules appear primarily in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26, 34, and 37.]

Click here for more information on the EDRM XML Schema.

Click here for more information about EDRM.

Updated as of October 2011: Legal Informatics Conference Calendar

The legal informatics conference calendar has now been updated.

The calendar lists primarily scholarly conferences that focus on legal information systems, or that are known to welcome papers on legal information systems.

Click here for a list of events just added to the calendar.

If you know of events or other information that should be on the calendar but are not; or if you spot errors in the calendar, I’d be grateful if you would please share that information in the comments to this post.

McGrath: Towards a Bill Status Data Model

Sean McGrath of Proplyon has posted Towards a Bill Status Data Model, in The NIEM EDemocracy Initiative (NEI) Google Group.

In this post, Mr. McGrath sets out “5 possible approaches to a 50-state bill
status data model” for U.S. states. The post also contains descriptions of typical attributes of U.S. state legislative information systems relating to bill status. Mr. McGrath hopes this post will begin a conversation about a bill status data model.

Click here for background information on the NIEM EDemocracy Initiative.

JURIX 2011: Accepted Papers

Accepted papers have been announced for JURIX 2011: The International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, to be held 14-16 December 2011, at the University of Vienna Centre for Legal Informatics, in Vienna, Austria.

URN:LEX: New Version 04 Available

A new version 04 of the URN:LEX standard for legal identifiers has been posted. The new version is dated 5 September 2011, and expires 8 March 2012.

The new version has been published by Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of the Italian National Research Council (ITTIG/CNR); Italy, National Centre for ICT in Public Administration (CNIPA) [now DigitPA]; Brazil, Federal Senate, IT Department (PRODASEN); and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School (LII).

The contacts for the draft are Professor Dr. Enrico Francesconi & Pierluigi Spinosa, both of ITTIG/CNR, and Caterina Lupo of CNIPA/DigitPA.

According to the new version:

The purpose of the “lex” namespace is to assign an unequivocal identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources of law. To the extent of this namespace, “sources of law” include any legal document within the domain of legislation, case law and administrative acts or regulations; moreover potential “sources of law” (acts under the process of law formation, as bills) are included as well. Therefore “legal doctrine” is explicitly not covered.

The authors have also developed a URN schema handler which can be used in conjunction with URN:LEX.