Oldskool open access to law princeton open government workshop 1/22/10.
-
Upload
michael-hawkins -
Category
Documents
-
view
215 -
download
3
Transcript of Oldskool open access to law princeton open government workshop 1/22/10.
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