oldskool open access to lawprinceton open government workshop 1/22/10

ancient history

✤ 1992: lii begins at cornell

✤ 1993: open access repositories in Canada, Australia. these gradually become comprehensive and national in scope

✤ now: 23 institutions worldwide offering open access to primary legal materials

✤ these are only the ones that are known to each other

recent important developments

✤ globalized litigation leads to lots of transborder question-answering

✤ recognized need to answer questions with strongly bifurcated price sensitivity

✤ eu harmonization

open access: normative arguments

✤ it’s the right thing to do

✤ access to law as a fundamental human right

✤ policing of government operations

✤ “ignorance of the law is no excuse” and the implied obligation to promulgate

open access:pragmatic arguments

✤ trade facilitation

✤ government efficiency

✤ risk management

✤ reduced costs of litigation/legal

open access: surefire arguments

✤ government’s access to its own work product

sucks.

differentiators: focus

✤ prototype-oriented vs. comprehensive

✤ self-publishing vs. publishing others

✤ opinions vs. statutes vs. regulations

differentiators: scope

✤ national vs. not (flagship, prototype, or single-jurisdiction)

✤ centralized vs. federated (or federable)

✤ permanent or ever-growing vs. devolutionary

differentiators: sustainability models

✤ self-operated by law creator

✤ grant-funded (easier in establishment phase)

✤ stakeholder supported (including lawyer head tax)

✤ public donation (“NPR model”)

✤ entrepreneurial cross-subsidized (eg. Justia.com, Fastcase)

differentiators: standards awareness

✤ many early implementers were “full speed ahead” without much awareness of standards

✤ extreme process orientation + exceptionalism = bad result

✤ naivete about long tail

✤ fear of standards process as tar pit

✤ newer operations, esp. those in EU, are better