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The Legal Information Institute

The Legal Information Institute. What is it, and what questions does it raise?. Prelude: Gilmore v. Ashcroft. “Secret law”: sorry, but you can’t see the rules Very dramatic, but no different from the situation of most people, including many lawyers: Appearing in Kenya’s High Court

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The Legal Information Institute

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  1. The Legal Information Institute What is it, and what questions does it raise?

  2. Prelude: Gilmore v. Ashcroft • “Secret law”: sorry, but you can’t see the rules • Very dramatic, but no different from the situation of most people, including many lawyers: • Appearing in Kenya’s High Court • Hit by a snowplow on the NYS Thruway

  3. What’s an LII? • History, facts, and figures • An electronic publisher • A content creator • An applied-research activity • A value-adding filter and integrator/aggregator

  4. What is legal information? • For today’s purposes, note-government. • Judicial opinions • Statutes and codes • Regulations • These separate classes are related: • Judicial opinions interpret and validate statutes and regulations • Codes organize statutes • Statutes enable regulations • All have unique problems of cost, maintenance, accuracy.

  5. Who cares? Why? • “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” / public right to know • Stare decisis – precedents rule • Law publishing levels the playing field • Law publishing is an economic engine • As business-generator • As risk-management tool • As indicator of business climate

  6. The LII as filter • Existing public-access requirements say little about format or value. • Integration via hyperlinking • Within a corpus • Across multiple collections • Across multiple collection types [illustrations- / +] • Adding value via • Presentation [illustrations - / +] • Structural & informational disambiguation

  7. How is legal information different? • Defined by a very sophisticated print tradition • Strong connection between format and function • Problems of accuracy and authority are treated very seriously • Experts and nonexperts do research very differently

  8. How is it the same? • Nonexperts confronting expert information • Impoverished models of information-seeking [illustrations+ / -] • Barriers are raised by a lack of interoperability

  9. Issues raised by law-on-the-web • Who should publish? • (issuer vs. third-party public vs. private) • A little knowledge: how dangerous is it? • Balance of power between • government and governed • lawyer and client • Privacy

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