Emerging global networks for free access to law: WorldLII's strategies

Graham Greenleaf
2007 SCRIPTed: A Journal of Law, Technology & Society  
Those who value free access to law need to respond to the increasingly global nature of legal research, and the fact that most countries still do not have effective facilities for free access to law. The free access to law movement, centred around Universitybased Legal Information Institutes (LIIs), is assisting and encouraging the development of free access law facilities in many countries in the developing world. While doing so, it is also creating a global network of interconnected
more » ... s legal research facilities on the Internet. This network is becoming comparable to the global legal research facilities provided by the multinational legal publishers. The free access to law movement is explained: its history, methods of cooperation, and Declaration on Free Access to Law. Public policies to maximise free access to law are advanced to explain why it is not good enough for governments to provide 3 We will not discuss in detail here why should we value free access to legal information. In relation to the laws of one own country, the most obvious reason is that access to legal information supports the rule of law. People should not be governed by laws to which they do not have effective access. Businesses have much the same needs as individuals. Also, attraction to foreign investment is enhanced by free access to information about the operation of a country's legal system. Transparency of a country's legal system is one of the three legal and administrative requirements for WTO membership, and this is enhanced by free access to at least regulatory materials. We also value free access to the laws of other countries, for the reasons sketched above. The secondary goal should be for the local providers of free access to legal information to establish networks which facilitate searches over all of their content, so as to create a facility comparable to the global reach of the multinational legal publishers. This may seem a utopian goal, but some commentators already treat it as plausible 7 , and the network of free access legal information providers has grown to include almost 500 databases of legal materials in less than five years, drawn from 55 countries. This paper focuses on this secondary goal, and is largely about the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) project, and the context out of which it comes.
doi:10.2966/scrip.040407.319 fatcat:7775mt536zeltikwwpo6cfjwze