1.
OpenLaws.eu -
access to law
Prof. Chris Marsden
LAPSI2
4 September 2014

2.
2
Expanding open innovation to law
Introducing mass-customization to law
Proposing a comprehensive European
 “Big Open Legal Data” (BOLD) Vision 2020
 for incremental implementation,
 built on top of existing EU and national systems and content
 (e.g. EUR-Lex, e-Justice System, e-Codex).
Chris Marsden (Sussex)

3.
3
Developing BOLD ICT Platform
Launch of:
a. dedicated legal EU social networks.
b. a hub for open access legal journals.
Promote
open data,
open access publications, and
open standards
 (e.g. ELI, ECLI) in the legal field.
 Contribute to Open Innovation Strategy/Policy
Group (OISPG)
Chris Marsden (Sussex)

4.
4
Developing big online legal data
Free Access to Law movement (FALM)
 online case law via BAILII in the UK
 Legal Information Institutes (AustLII, Cornell etc.)
#GoodLaw online statutes
 expanded rapidly, crowdsourcing ideas for #goodlaw
Online legal education and research
 BILETA since 1985
 Electronic Law Journals project at Warwick
 EJLT – now Script-ed + IJoC at USC many US law journals
 Journal of Open Access to Law (JOAL) est. 2014!
 publishing books via Creative Commons: MCahrirs sMdaersdnen 2 (S0u1sse0x)

5.
5
Greenleaf (2011, 2012) identifies 6
historic phases to achieve FALM
1. Example set by the LII (Cornell) and LexuM in early 90s
2. AustLII’s 1995 formulation: obligations of official publishers
3. 2002 Declaration on Free Access to Law
4. ‘Guiding Principles’ for States formulated by 2008 expert
meeting convened by Hague Conference on Private
International Law
5. ‘Law.Gov principles’ developed by Public Resources.org
in 2010; and
6. draft Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act
recommended in 2011
1. US National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State
Laws Chris Marsden (Sussex)

6.
Is your Ministry of Justice ready
for (r)evolution?
#Goodlaw
 radical crowd-sourced legislative approach
Open Data
 Very fashionable amongst G8 countries etc.
 Implementation more patchy than general
UK: BAILII and Supreme Court reforms; Society for
Computers and Law trying hard
 Computers and Law is open – it can be done
But we really need a pan-European approach
Chris Marsden (Sussex)
6

7.
Why not build a
smartphone app for lawyers?
 Already done using open case law,
statute, articles
Where? Austria RIS:App
Why not here? Why not everywhere?
Chris Marsden (Sussex)
7

8.
8
Team – note Andres Guadamuz
CC licence expert
Institution Name
UVAmsterdam Prof. Radboud G.F. Winkels
Prof. Mireille van Eechoud LAPSI2.0
Sussex Prof. Chris Marsden
Dr Andres Guadamuz CC4.0
London School of
Economics
Dr. Paolo Dini
Dr. Shenja van der Graaf BXL
Dr. Antonella Passani ROMA
ALPENITE -
developers
Giulio Marcon
Gianluigi Alberici
SUAS Prof. Thomas Heistracher
Chris Marsden (Sussex)
DI (FH) Thomas Lampoltshammer
BYWASS Dr. Clemens Wass, MBL, MBA

9.
Report No.
D1.2.1 – EU
Case Study
Version 1.0 DRAFT FOR
COMMENT NOT
ATTRIBUTION

10.
Mapping Open Law
Mapping of stakeholders,
processes in legal information
production and consumption
levels of regulatory instruments
flows of content, rights, value.
Chris Marsden (Sussex)
10

11.
4 Case Studies
 Assessing barriers to adoption of open
access to legislation, case law,
commentary
 Developed over 18 months
 EU
 Netherlands
 UK
 Austria
 Final synthesis report on BOLD

12.
EU first draft case study
 European institutions' provision of free
access to European Union law,
 cases, legislation, regulation, academic-expert
analysis.
 Month 4, contingent; will be revised.
 Key functionalities of existing legal
publishing system are summarized and
described.

13.
Case studies:
key socio-economic & legal aspects
Illustrate main functionalities, structure &
operation.
 analysis of social, legal and market
requirements.
 informed by key informant interviews.
 supported by literature review of existing
information systems legal databases (M6),
 workshops (including LASPSI2 workshop)

14.
Breadth of stakeholders
interviewed is broad
Experts from:
 Academia,
 Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPB),
trading funds,
 private entrepreneurs,
 corporations,
 standards bodies,
 non-governmental organizations and
 government policy officials with both
domestic and international responsibilities.

15.
Soft Systems Methodology
(SSM) framework
 identify the key components of the problem
 provide key specifications for system to be built,
 combination of
 desk research,
 in-depth interviews, and
 focus groups.
 Rich multimedia flowcharts and other illustrative
material will be used in further drafts
 to describe problem in context of SSM approach
 to facilitate discussion between user and
development communities.

16.
Publication of draft case studies &
final comparative report
 dissemination and feedback mechanisms
 both on-line
 (e.g. via open access websites, promotion via social
media and comment promotion)
 offline (via workshops and conferences)
 to create a close expert panel
 constructive critique for future iterations of reports,
 final version published M24 conclusion of project.

17.
CAMPO
Adaptation of standard socio-legal framework
 Context
 Environment of community/organisation/market
 Actors
 Publishers, official document providers, users
 Methodology
 Including both open and closed access
 Practices
 Including user experience, litigation/regulation
 Outcomes
 Including market, regulatory reform

18.
CAMPO Description Added value
Context Initial part of the case study outlines the
overall context in which the community
emerges/operates - type of legal
informatics technology Systematic catalogue
of cases/actors/issues
Actors What type of community is observed
(primary groups, market actors, user groups
etc.)
Methods Investigation method: Details of procedures
to map the case study and the techniques
used to perform analysis (research design
details + actual methods)
Catalogue of
methodological
approaches to
investigate different
communities
Practices Dynamics of interaction: Illustration of
dynamics observed in each case study
Detailed insights on
interplay
Outcomes Summary of integration at EC level Conclusions, limits of
analysis for member
states

19.
CAMPO Description
Context Programme of observation with legal community and developers.
Actors Office of Official Publications; EurLEX unit
Various regulator websites DG Justice
Multinational legal publishers (member state based –analysis in
country case studies)
No Legal Information Institute for EU, start-up (EuroLII) in process.
Commentary provided by Brussels affiliates of international law
firms + European law academics based in national universities
Methods Significant methodology challenges to researching this
‘community’, if European law can be said to have created a
single community, as opposed to enabling several communities at
national level with European coordination or at least input.
Relatively little academic empirical study of European legal
informatics, until recently.
Ethical implications similar problems as national legal communities.
Practices Research conclusions must be provisional and transient.
Outcomes Further research needed to solve methodology problems for
exploring environment.

20.
European legal data born open:
1958 Official Journal policy
 Resources devoted to multi-lingual and multi-national
publication.
 development – and now redevelopment – of EUR-Lex
and efforts to integrate with national
databases via N-Lex and now EUCases.
 boosted by the stronger political commitment to
open data in Commissioner Kroes’ Digital Agenda
and the European Council October 2013
conclusions which contain a strong endorsement
of open data, linked to the revised Public Sector
Information (PSI) Directive.
 This is shared by other major legal systems and
governments’ wider commitments to open data,
for instance the June ’13 G8 Open Data Charter.

21.
 European legal informatics space seems
unique in at least seven respects
 compared to our three country case
studies.

22.
1. Unprecedented multilingual
economic and political area
 4 original languages (French, German, Dutch,
Italian)
 precedent setting ‘Supreme Court’ worked in French.
 The decision to make access to documentation
freely available at production and then no charge
 context of no developed market actors
 to challenge ‘super-nationalised’ state provision of
legal information and case law reportage.

23.
2. The essential role of European law in
creating the ‘acquis communitaire’
 Political decision to make law widely
available at below marginal cost
 To critical mass of advocates at national levels
 no serious resistance beyond budgetary
questions.
 comparison with bi-lingual European Court of
Human Rights presentation of case law,
 rather than national court systems.
 Note linguistic diversity of EU and severe
budgetary constraints of the ECHR system.

24.
3. European law was pushing
on an open policy door
 expansion occurred at the same time as
a massive expansion in European
institutional competences and budget.
 boom-bust cycle of many national legal
reporting environments
 far longer and more crisis-ridden history
 not an EU feature of resistance to wider
access to law.

25.
4. EU law expanded rapidly
concurrently with legal informatics
 Throughout the 1980s and onwards,
 development of EU law and legal databases
has been a largely happy marriage
 though with various standards-based and
institutional strains
 inevitable in system growing at rapid rate.

26.
5. European precedent for
national law
 leading to recognition of its power to influence
national legislation
 not only in its legal effect
 salutary example of free access to the over-arching
law in so many national legal fields.
 European law is an example to national
legislatures, courts and commentators.
 The use of judgments as precedent setting has
parallels with the ECHR system and also national
common law systems with Supreme Courts, such
as England and the United States.

27.
6. European court decisions
and legislative reforms now
affect 28 nations
 Importance of effective communication of
changes is evident (arguably more powerfully)
 United States Supreme Court decisions have
‘ripple’ effects at
 state, municipal and regional levels in United States.
 Examples in the field of information law include the
‘Right to be Forgotten’ (sic) case of Google v. Spain
(2014) , and Digital Rights Ire-land (2014) ,
 which were the subjects of enormous immediate
commentary at European and national levels.

28.
7. Commentary: Law firms in
Brussels and Luxembourg
 enormously well resourced
 compared to national level in all but the
largest jurisdictions.
 case commentary is frequently rapidly
and comprehensively supplied freely
 ‘loss leader’ to attract both national and
non-European clients
 to use the services of these highly
competent and highly marketed law firms.

29.
Federal exception that proves
the national rule
 Is European legal data so open to reuse and
access: ‘exception that proves the rule’?
 national systems hampered by legacies of
closed and restrictively licensed underfunded
systems.
 This will be a major research theme in national
case studies.
 European legal information not as widely
reused and repurposed as US federal law,
 best of breed example to emulate where
possible?

30.
c.marsden@sussex.ac.uk
@openlaws
@ChrisTMarsden
www.openlaws.eu