Ensuring Public Access to Digital Legal Information: To Be Discussed at iConference 2010

[NOTE: Updated on 9 February 2010 to link to slides from the presentations (HT @freegovinfo). Updated on 3 February 2010 to link to the abstract for the roundtable. HT @freegovinfo.]

Ensuring online public access to legal information will be discussed by Tom Bruce, co-founder and director of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, at Roundtable Number 4, “Gone Today, Here Tomorrow: Assuring Access to Government Information in the Digital Age” (scroll down) (click here for the abstract for the roundtable), to be held 4 February 2010 at 3:45 p.m., at iConference 2010 [the conference of iSchools], at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library & Information Science, in Champaign, Illinois, USA.

Click here for slides from the presentations (HT @freegovinfo).

(Among the topics discussed by the panelists was the Law.gov legal open government data project).

Other roundtable panelists include:

• Cynthia Etkin of the U.S. Government Printing Office;
• James R. Jacobs of the Stanford University Library;
• Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation;
• ShinJoung Yeo of Stanford University Library.

HT @freegovinfo.

New Report on Sealed Cases in Federal Courts

A new report entitled Sealed Cases in Federal Courts (2009) has been issued by the U.S. Federal Judicial Center. The authors are Tim Reagan and George Cort. Here is the abstract:

“An analysis of all cases filed in federal district courts, bankruptcy courts, and courts of appeals in 2006 revealed that 0.2% of civil cases, 1.6% of criminal cases, 16% of magistrate judge cases, 34% of miscellaneous cases, and 0.1% of appeals were sealed approximately two years after filing. Cases filed in bankruptcy courts are virtually never sealed. This report, prepared for a sealed case subcommittee of the Judicial Conference‘s standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, describes why and how cases were sealed.”

Note that the report covers only cases filed in 2006.

CFR in XML Available for Bulk Download from GPO

[NOTE: Updated on 27 December 2009 to add the final four paragraphs.]

The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for 2007-2009 is now available for bulk download in XML from U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) FDsys. Click here for the user guide.

Why is this of potential interest to the legal community? First, attorneys, legal IT personnel, and law librarians can download the CFR in XML and process it so that they, their colleagues, and the communities they serve can use it free of charge, without incurring the costs of using a for-fee online service. The XML markup enables the code to be output in a wide range of formats or integrated with a number of other information resources.

Second, many organizations that publish legal information for free on the Internet or at low cost — such as the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University and Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy and its FedThread federal regulations publishing project — can download the CFR, process it, and make it available to the legal community and the public. This should result in greater competition in the market for legal information and ultimately lower costs for users of legal information.

This is the second major legal information access initiative at GPO this year. Earlier in 2009, GPO began making available the Federal Register for bulk download in XML.

These data access initiatives are consistent with such law-related Open Government Data activities as the U.S. Government’s Open Government Directive and the Law.gov project, which will be the subject of a number of public meetings throughout the U.S. in the first half of 2010.

Legislation 2.0: Government of Greece

The government of Greece has begun to make draft legislation available for public comment on its Website, opengov.gr. Professor Ioannis Iglezakis of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Law School provides background information and commentary on his Information Law blog.

Batista & Cornock on How Difficulties Interpreting Data Protection Laws Inhibit Public Access to Government Information

Dr. Luciano Batista & Dr. Marc Cornock, both lecturers at The Open University Business School, have published Information Sharing in E-Government Initiatives: Freedom of Information and Data Protection Issues Concerning Local Government, 2009(2) Journal of Information, Law & Technology (JILT). Here is the abstract:

“In e-government initiatives, the sharing of information is crucial for empowering citizens and boosting joined-up services. The lack of clear guidance on how to share government data can potentially harm Freedom of Information and or Data Protection rights. This article addresses this issue by drawing from the main concerns governments have when dealing with Freedom of Information and Data Protection issues. As illustration, we comment on the findings of a case study we have conducted in a Local Authority in the United Kingdom (UK). Our findings show that local government managers might be struggling to adequately implement Freedom of Information and Data Protection aspects. Cultural aspects are subtly present in this context, as managers’ values and beliefs regarding public access to information might be biased toward either information disclosure or information withholding.”

Legal informatics researchers may be particular interested in the discussion in the article of difficulties government officials may be experiencing in interpreting and applying the UK Freedom of Information and Data Protection statutes. The authors argue that this difficulty in processing and using legal information may be a key factor resulting in undesired limitations on public access to government information.

Professor Bruce Shows the Value of Free Access to Law

Professor Tom Bruce, Director of Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute (LII), this week has powerfully demonstrated the value of free access to law. He gives a detailed account of the matter here. Here is a summary (Tom, please correct me if I get any of this wrong.):

According to press reports, Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, USA, recently asserted that he had legal authority, under U.S. federal law, to apprehend individuals considered to be undocumented immigrants to the United States. To support this assertion, the press reports state, the sheriff cited what he represented as a U.S. federal statute, which, he asserted, he had discovered in the LII’s version of the U.S. Code. Unfortunately for the sheriff, as the press reports relate, this assertion turned out to be inconsistent with the truth: the “statute” that the sheriff had reportedly cited is not a U.S. federal law, nor a law of any other jurisdiction: it seems to be a work of fiction, apparently created by an anti-immigrant political activist organization.

Yet, according to news reports, because the LII publishes a current, freely available version of the U.S. Code on its Website, many individuals who learned of the sheriff’s assertions were able to use the LII’s version of the Code to investigate the sheriff’s assertions and to determine that the sheriff’s representation of the law was inaccurate.

Preventing government officials from misrepresenting the law, by giving citizens free public access to the law, is arguably among the most powerful justifications for the free access to law movement, and for continued support for the legal information institutes.

Congratulations to Professor Bruce and the LII team, and to the other members of the free access to law movement, for providing to people throughout the world the vital benefit of access to the laws that govern them.

Knight Commission Report: Law-Related Recommendations

Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age: The Report of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy has been issued. Information about the commission is available here. The Twitter hashtag for discussion of the report is #knightcomm.

Surprisingly, the report does not appear to identify access to the laws in force in a jurisdiction as being among the information needs of communities in a democracy. (I would very much like to know the reason for this omission.) Nonetheless, the report makes several recommendations respecting law-related information (all emphasis below is added):

• The report calls for “[r]equir[ing] government at all levels to operate transparently, facilitate easy and low-cost access to public records, and make civic and social data available in standardized formats that support the productive public use of such data”;
• The report calls for “open courtrooms. In criminal and civil matters, any closing of proceedings or sealing of records should meet a high standard in terms of the public interests protected. Court proceedings, particularly at the appellate level, should be open to cameras“;
• The report contends that “[o]pen-meetings laws should require
  that all public agencies conduct their deliberations and take their actions openly. The public should be able to witness and participate in the process of governing. If possible, governments should allow citizens to participate in hearings or other fact-gathering processes electronically“;
• The report also recommends that “[a]t every level, legislative bodies should operate with genuine transparency. Members of the public should be able to track and comment upon successive versions of proposed statutes and ordinances, whether federal, state, or local. Except in genuine emergencies, legislators should not vote on proposals that have not had public vetting with a meaningful opportunity for public comment.”

These recommendations may be of interest to legal informatics researchers and developers working in such areas as free access to law, erulemaking, elegislation, and the development of digital law libraries.

Videos Available for Jornada eJusticia = eJustice Seminar, Trujillo & México DF

Videos are now available for many of the presentations and panels of the I Jornada eJusticia: Hacia un sistema de justicia transparente = 1st Seminar on eJustice: Toward a Transparent System of Justice, held Sept 24, 2009, simultaneously in Trujillo, Spain & México D.F.

The conference was organized by Centro Extremeño de Tecnologías Avanzadas (CETA), Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TE México), & Fundación Ciencias de la Documentación (FCD).

Linked Data and Law

Since I last posted on the availability of Library of Congress Subject Headings for law becoming available as Linked Data marked up in SKOS, a number of additional legal information resources have become available as Linked Data (or, in the case of the LKIF-Core Ontology, have been available for some time, but I’ve only recently learned of the Linked Data version). Here is a description of those that I can identify from the LinkedData.org Data Sets page (those identified from other sources are noted):

• The Legal Information Institute has described its Linked Legal Data project respecting the Code of Federal Regulations, in Casellas et al., Linked Legal Data: Improving Access to Regulatory Information (2012);
• The CALI Taxonomy is in the process of being marked up in RDF and made available as Linked Data, in a joint project of CALI: The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School, and the Rutgers University Camden Law Library Digital Collections. Thanks to Tom Bruce, Director of the LII, and John Joergensen, creator of the Rutgers Camden Digital Collections for this information;
• DBPedia offers law-related articles from Wikipedia as Linked Data marked up in RDF & SKOS; here is the display for “tort law”;
• The first two levels of the “Law” classes of the Dewey Decimal Classification are now available as Linked Data (HT Lorcan Dempsey);
• EUROVOC, the European multilingual thesaurus, which contains a rich set of legal subject terms, is now available as Linked Data in SKOS from EUROVOC and from CTIC;
• GovTrack includes U.S. congressional legislation and The Congressional Record as Linked Data marked up in on RDF;
• The Italian Senate has made available a SPARQL endpoint for legislative Linked Data;
• The LC Name Authority File is now available as Linked Data (as of August 2011). Click here for access to bulk data for download. This file contains records for very large numbers of government entities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, India, and many other nations, as well as the names of thousands of law-related individuals. Click here for more details. HT @naypinya;
• The Library of Congress (LC) plans to make its Name Authority File available as RDF Linked Data later in 2010. That file contains the names of thousands of government agencies in the U.S., the U.K., and other jurisdictions, as well as the names of thousands of law-related individuals. Thanks to a source at LC for this information;
• The Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings are available in SKOS Linked Data [URL corrected 10 August 2011]. Click here for access to bulk data for download. LC Subject Headings contain very large and detailed taxonomies of subject terms for U.S. and U.K. law, as well as legal taxonomies for many other jurisdictions, and for public international law. Click here for a post about the implications of LC Subject Headings in SKOS Linked Data, for digital legal publishing. (Note that the Linked Data versions of the Rameau and LC Subject Headings now link to each other.)
• FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) as Linked Data, published by OCLC: This is “an enumerative, faceted subject heading schema derived from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)”; i.e., an un-coordinated version of LCSH. Like LCSH, FAST contains a very large collection of legal subject terms. Click here for a description of FAST Linked Data.
• The Library of Congress Classification K Class: Law is available as Linked Data from the LC Linked Data Service. Click here for Kevin Ford’s post describing the data.
• The Legal Information Institute Legislative Metadata Model supports Linked Data;
• The LKIF-Core Ontology, developed within the ESTRELLA project, has been available in RDF since at least 2007 (HT Dr. Rinke Hoekstra);
• The UK National Archives‘ Legislation.gov.uk incorporates Linked Data (click here for details; for earlier discussion of this system, see details from Dr. John L. Sheridan via Dr. Adam Wyner here and here);
• The MetaLex Document Server is a source for all Dutch national statutes and regulations, free on the Web, in CEN MetaLex XML and RDF Linked Data. It was developed by Dr. Rinke Hoekstra of Leibniz Center for Law. (Click here for a post about The MetaLex Document Server.)
• RAMEAU French-language subject headings for legal topics are now available in Linked Data marked up on SKOS, from the Department of Computer Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. (Note that the Linked Data versions of the Rameau and LC Subject Headings now link to each other.)

  For example, here is the display for “Faute (droit)”. Here are instructions for using the search interface:

  • In section 1., under “Concept Scheme Group”, select “Rameau”;
  • In section 2., in the “Label” box, enter a law-related term, such as: faute ;
  • In the results list of subject terms, click on one of the terms (e.g., click on Faute (droit));
  • At the bottom of the page, click on “Display concept details”;
  • On the page that appears, the related concepts will display; click on any of them to explore further.
• The UMBEL ontology includes several legal concepts available as Linked Data; search here (e.g., search for: law );
• VIAF, the Virtual International Authority File, enables bulk download of Linked Data versions (in RDF) of name authority records for organizations (corporate bodies) and individuals (personal names) from more than 30 national or research libraries. Records can also be searched through the VIAF Web user interface;
• Joshua Tauberer has made some U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents from the EDGAR database available as Linked Data marked up in RDF;
• Watchdog.net includes metadata for selected U.S. congressional legislation as Linked Data marked up in RDF; for example, here is metadata for H.R. 1357 from the 108th Congress (click on “XML” in the line that begins “Developers”);
• The Linked Data version of WordNet, from the RKB Explorer Initiative, contains a very large number of legal terms; see, e.g., this display for “Contract” (scroll down to see all the related terms);
• The eGovernment Interest Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C eGov IG) has published a report entitled Publishing Open Government Data that recommends that governments incorporate Linked Data into their publicly available information;
• The YAGO ontology contains a number of legal concepts, available as Linked Data; see, e.g., the display for “tort”. Here are suggestions for using the search interface:
  • Scroll down to the words “Query Form”;
  • In the row labeled “?id0:”, in the first box, enter a legal term, such as estoppel;
  • In the second box in that row, select the term “means”;
  • Click “Submit”;
  • When the results appear, click on any of the results to see the Linked Data display;
  • In the Linked Data display, click on any of the results to explore further.

If you know of additional legal knowledge representation systems available as Linked Data, please mention them in the comments.

[Updated 26 April 2013 to include VIAF, the Virtual International Authority File. HT @3windmills]

[Updated 26 April 2013 to include Bulk access to Library of Congress Linked Data Name Authority records and Subject Authority records. HT @3windmills]

[Updated 12 April 2013 to include The Library of Congress Classification K Class: Law, now available as Linked Data from the LC Linked Data Service.

[Updated 18 March 2013 to include the Italian Senate's SPARQL endpoint for legislative Linked Data.]

[Updated 16 March 2013 to include Legal Information Institute Legislative Metadata Model.]

[UPDATE 6 April 2012: The Legal Information Institute has described its legal Linked Data project respecting the Code of Federal Regulations in Casellas et al., Linked Legal Data: Improving Access to Regulatory Information (2012).]

[Updated 15 December 2011: OCLC has made available FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) as Linked Data.]

[UPDATE 10 August 2011: The Library of Congress has made available the LC Name Authority File as Linked Data.]

[NOTE: Updated on 29 July 2010 to link to the new Legislation.gov.uk. Updated on 18 February 2010 to correct the RAMEAU link. Updated on 17 February 2010 to link to the SKOS version of EUROVOC (HT @iricelino). Updated on 17 January 2010 to mention that the Linked Data versions of the Rameau and Library of Congress Subject Headings now link to each other. Updated on 2 January 2010 to add link to Library of Congress Subject Headings in SKOS Linked Data, and to revise the link to UK OPSI's Legislation site. Updated on 1 January 2010 to mention LC's plan to make its Name Authority File available as Linked Data later in 2010, and the effort to make the CALI Taxonomy available as Linked Data. Updated on 20 September 2009 to link to UK OPSI's Single Legislation Service and to the W3C eGovernment Interest Group's report entitled Publishing Open Government Data. Updated on 8-20-09 to include LKIF-Core Ontology.]