Dr. Hughes-Jean Vibert of Institut für Rechtsinformatik, Universität des Saarlandes, and Kerry Anderson of the African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII), have posted JurisPedia: Perspectives, on the VoxPopuLII blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.
In this post, the authors describe JurisPedia, the free, international, multilingual, crowdsourced legal encyclopedia, and how it applies principles of crowdsourcing to legal information in many countries. The post describes the development of the English-language version of JurisPedia and its hosting by the Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII) and then the African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII).
The authors describe the motivating principles of JurisPedia — particularly the principle of shared law — the potential tension between inclusiveness and quality control, and the service’s Creative Commons license. The post tells of the recent addition to JurisPedia of Google Custom Search functionality enabling searching of the laws of 80 countries. Finally, the authors discuss how JurisPedia provides legal information in multiple languages to individuals in particular nations, and how JurisPedia can ease ordinary citizens’ access to the laws of most countries of the world.
For more information, please see the complete post.
Tags: AfricanLII, Cross-language legal information retrieval, Cross-language legal information systems, Crowdsourcing and legal information, Free access to law, Hughes-Jean Vibert, JurisPedia, Kerry Anderson, Legal encyclopedias, Legal information retrieval, Legal social media, Legal wikis, Multilingual legal information retrieval, Multilingual legal information systems, Public access to legal information, SAFLII, VoxPopuLII, Web 2.0 and law, Wikis and law
February 16, 2012 at 1:45 pm |
This is a great story and a great initiative. I think shared law is a good approach and will work; Wikipedia in general has shown that with dedicated writers and enough of an audience of readers and checkers, the quality can be good and the scope of info can be expansive. I think using crowdsourcing plus putting legal info online will increase access to justice and allow people to find what they’re looking for in the medium they’re used.
Thanks for sharing!