Uniform Electronic Material Act Approved by ULC

The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act — formerly called The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act — has been approved by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC; formerly called the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, NCCUSL) at their annual meeting in Vail, Colorado, according to a ULC Twitter post.

[Update 12 July 2011, 6:22 p.m. Pacific: Click here for the ULC's press release.]

According to ULC, the vote was “45 [states] in favor, 1 abstention and 7 states not voting.”

The Act establishes uniform legal standards for the authentication and preservation of U.S. state legal information in digital formats.

The chair of the drafting committee for the Act is Michele L. Timmons, the Revisor of Statutes for the State of Minnesota, and the committee’s reporter is Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Texas School of Law.

Click here for the meeting agenda.

Click here for the current draft of the Act and the memo describing it.

Click here for earlier drafts of the Act and related documents.

July 7: NCCUSL to Consider Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act

The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act — formerly called The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act — will be considered by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) at their upcoming annual meeting, on 7 July 2011, in Vail, Colorado. The Act would establish uniform legal standards for the authentication and preservation of U.S. state legal information in digital formats.

The chair of the drafting committee for the Act is Michele L. Timmons, the Revisor of Statutes for the State of Minnesota, and the committee’s reporter is Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Texas School of Law.

Click here for the meeting agenda.

Click here for the current draft of the Act and the memo describing it.

Click here for earlier drafts of the Act and related documents.

NCCUSL Accepts Draft Uniform Statute on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials

The latest draft of The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act, and its accompanying report, were accepted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) on 15 July 2010, according to a report by Professor Barbara Bintliff of the University of Colorado School of Law, the reporter to NCCUSL Drafting Committee on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials, which is drafting the statute.

According to Professor Bintliff’s report, the NCCUSL Committee of the Whole’s principal comments on the draft were as follows:

a request for clarification of the relationship between the state’s official publishers and commercial publishers; a desire by Commissioners to include “free access” to preserved, historical materials as an option; and a need to explain better the Drafting Committee’s intentions regarding the effective date of the act.

According to Professor Bintliff’s report, the drafting committee will meet again on 19-21 November 2010 in Washington, DC, USA, to address those comments and to consider further revisions to the draft statute. Professor Bintliff’s report states that a second reading of the draft statute by NCCUSL is expected in summer 2011.

Most of the previous drafts and other documents produced by the drafting committee are available at the drafting committee’s documents Website.

Lines on Legal Texts as Grey Literature

Michael Lines of the University of Victoria Law Library presented a paper entitled Are Legal Texts Grey Literature? Toward an Understanding of GL that Invites the Preservation of Authentic and Genuine Originals, at GL 11: The Eleventh International Conference on Grey Literature, held 14-15 December 2009 at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, USA.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

Legal, archival and textual-critical concepts help to clarify important elements of the relationships between author, text, and publisher, and also open an opportunity to discuss seriously the preservation of authentic and genuine originals of GL.

Primary legal texts – legislation and case law – are produced by governments, and are not controlled by commercial publishing. As such, they meet current definitions of Grey Literature. However, they are not normally considered GL due to a combination of factors. These include the perception of legal texts as different in kind due to their special status as expressions of law, and more specifically due to the largescale publicly-owned (or deeply influenced) publishing concerns that produce them, their wide distribution, and their commercial-style formats.

A pervasive quality of GL is that it is closely connected to the work and purpose of the issuing body, and it is not influenced by commercial publishing priorities. Thus, catalogues, press releases, and financial reports issued by a publisher about its own internal workings are GL, in spite of having been published by a ‘commercial publisher.’ Such documents are integral to the life of a publisher in a way that an individual title is not, and such materials are subject to different criteria when it comes to evaluating their content.

This contrast brings to light the fact that it is not the techniques, processes, materials, or distribution channels of commercial publishers that distinguish their works from GL, but rather the relationships that exist between the author, the text and the publisher.

The unbroken connection of GL with the purpose of the issuing body invites us to explore the concepts of Authenticity, Genuineness, and Originality developed in Archival Studies by Luciana Duranti. To further explore the relationships between author, text, and publisher more generally, concepts from Book History and textual criticism are used. Concepts from the law of evidence can be used to define other important elements of the question of these defining qualities of GL. It follows from these definitions that criteria can be established for the preservation of GL that do not compromise these qualities of the documents.

Revised Draft Available: Proposed State Statute on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials

A revised discussion draft of The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act, has been posted at the documents Website of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) Drafting Committee on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials.

The committee’s chair is Michele L. Timmons, the Revisor of Statutes for the State of Minnesota, and its reporter is Professor Barbara Bintliff of the University of Colorado School of Law.

According to the current draft of the statute’s prefatory note, “[d]igital information formats have become fundamental and indispensable to the operation of state government. This [act] addresses the critical need to manage electronic legal information in a manner that guarantees the trustworthiness of and continuing access to important state documents.”

The draft is to be discussed at the committee’s meeting to be held 5-7 March 2010 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Previous drafts, committee meeting minutes, and the study committee report, are available from the Website for the committee’s documents, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Biddle Law Library.

HT Tom Bruce.

Call for Papers: ‘Insculpta Imago’: Seal Matrices & Seal Impressions in the Mediterranean

A call for papers, with submissions deadline of 15 February 2010, has been issued for ‘Insculpta Imago’: Seal Matrices & Seal Impressions in the Mediterranean, a conference to be held 3-5 February 2011, at the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence – Max-Planck-Institute, in Florence, Italy.

Here is background on the subject: “With a 9000 year-old history the seal belongs to one of the oldest and most enduring forms of image reproduction, embracing numerous cultures. A seal matrix, or cylinder seal, seal tongs or gems mounted in seal rings can produce a large quantity of impressions in clay, lead or wax. In comparison with other artifacts seals have an exponentially high and wide distribution, in diplomatic correspondence and in trade, [on legal documents,] and as objects of representation and collection as well. Both the seal matrix and the seal impression are three dimensional, that is, sculptural images – ‘insculptae imagines’: the recessed image of the die appears raised and relief-like on the impression.”

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• “the seal images of different Mediterranean cultures;
• their legal status;
• their innovations or their intended adherence to traditional depictions and formulas;
• their mutual reception;
• the role of the materiality of seal dies and impressions; and
• the interaction of seals with other relevant artifacts and symbols.”

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Professor Dan Ernst at Legal History Blog.

Update on Legal Information Preservation: 2009 LIPA Minutes Available

Minutes are now available of the July 26, 2009 meeting of LIPA, the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, held in Washington, DC, at the 2009 AALL Annual Meeting. LIPA coordinates legal information preservation efforts in the United States. Here are some highlights of the July 2009 meeting:

• The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) has appointed a Drafting Committee on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials, to write a uniform state law setting standards for the preservation and authentication of U.S. state legal resources in digital format. The Committee Reporter is Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Colorado School of Law.
• The Chespeake Project Legal Information Archive completed its pilot project, during which it captured and preserved 4306 digital law-related information resources, in a system that runs on the CONTENTdm platform. LIPA Executive Director Margaret Maes reported that the Chesapeake Project “is now part of LIPA under the umbrella of the Legal Information Archive,” and LIPA members were to be invited to participate in the Legal Information Archive in the fall of this year;
• Professor Kent McKeever of Columbia University Law School reported on LIPA’s Print Retention Program, which monitors and coordinates the retention of print legal resources among U.S. law libraries. Here is the most recent report on this program. This project currently involves Columbia University’s Diamond Law Library and the Harvard Law School Library. There are plans to expand the project to enable other libraries to commit to preserving particular print legal resources. “There is a parallel project being done by the old RLG group whereby preservation status will be in 583 field of the bibliographic record. This model will allow smaller libraries to be able to participate in the print retention project.”
• LIPA has named a Digital Preservation Priorities and Inventory Committee, which is “developing priorities for selecting materials for a repository of digital and born-digital information and maintaining that information on the LIPA Website”;
• LIPA has a new strategic plan, whose goals include:
• promoting preservation of born-digital and print legal information resources;
• creating a database of LIPA’s preservation inventory; and
• developing best practices for legal information preservation.

For more information, please see the minutes, or visit the LIPA Website.

Papers Available for New Horizons for Civil Justice in Europe: Towards the “Stockholm Programme”

Papers and outlines for the presentations given at the conference, New Horizons for Civil Justice in Europe: Towards the “Stockholm Programme”, held November 5-6, 2009, at the ERA Congress Centre, in Trier, are now available.

Here is the conference program. Here are background documents for the conference. Here is a list of the presentations, many of which deal with legal informatics issues:

• Diana Wallis, From Tampere and The Hague to the Stockholm Programme;
• Burkhard Hess, Minimum standards in civil procedural law;
• Salla Saastamoinen & Paolo Pasqualis, Mutual recognition of documents: Civil status documents; Legalisation of authentic documents;
• Salla Saastamoinen & Ulrike Janzen, Abolition of exequatur: pros and cons;
• Alexander Layton, Speeding up cross-border debt recovery: Attachment of bank accounts; Transparency of debtor’s assets;
• Etienne Pataut, Drafting new conflict of law rules for business: Company law; Insurance contracts;
• Guillermo Palao Moreno, Pressing the “blue button”: the CFR as optional European contract law?
• Jacek Garstka, Providing easier access to justice: E-justice; Electronic order for payment and small claims procedure.

Cheddad et al. on a Self-Embedding Algorithm to Combat Digital Document Forgery

Abbas Cheddad, Professor Joan Condell, and colleagues, all of the University of Ulster at Magee School of Computing and Intelligent Systems have published A Secure and Improved Self-Embedding Algorithm to Combat Digital Document Forgery, forthcoming in 89 Signal Processing 2324 (Dec. 2009). Here is the abstract:

“The recent digital revolution has facilitated communication, data portability and on-the-fly manipulation. Unfortunately, this has brought along some critical security vulnerabilities that put digital documents at risk. The problem is in the security mechanism adopted to secure these documents by means of encrypted passwords; however, this security shield does not actually protect the documents which are stored intact. We propose here a solution to this real world problem through a 1D hash algorithm coupled with 2D iFFT (irreversible Fast Fourier Transform) to encrypt digital documents in the 2D spatial domain. Further by applying an imperceptible information hiding technique we can add another security layer which is resistant to noise and to a certain extent JPEG compression. We support this assertion by showing a practical example which is drawn from our set of experiments. This work exploits Jarvis’ kernel to generate the error diffusion signal and the Wavelet-based Inverse Halftoning via De-convolution (WInHD) to recover the approximation of the original signal. Our method not only points out forgery but also allows legal or forensics expert gain access to the original document despite being manipulated. This would undoubtedly be very useful in cases of disputes or claims.”