Conference debates challenges of accessing legal information on internet

It is not sufficient to create rights for individual citizens if they are not properly informed about them, Dr Aldo Zammit-Borda, Editor of the Commonwealth Law Bulletin, has said.

“Traditionally, laws and case-law have been considered the domain of judges and lawyers,” he observes. “The technical and opaque language in which they have been written, together with the large quantities produced, have created a virtually impenetrable barrier for ordinary citizens.”

Nowadays a number of countries have started to modernise this trend, and the internet is steadily also revolutionising the legal domain. This process of modernisation still presents a number of challenges, which were considered at the Ninth International Conference on Law via the Internet, held in Florence, Italy, on 30 and 31 October 2008.

“Free access to legal information is only a first, though fundamental, step,” says Dr Zammit-Borda, who attended this conference. “There needs to be mechanisms in place to ensure the quality of the information, in order to guarantee that the laws and case-laws are faithfully reproduced.”

In this respect, Professor Maximilian Herberger from Saarland University in Germany noted that a number of legal websites still carried a disclaimer warning users that the texts available online were not “authentic” – and invited users to refer to the paper versions - which in a sense defeated the whole point.

Some jurisdictions have, however, begun moving towards ensuring that the laws and case-laws they made available online were authentic, enabling citizens to rely on them in an official setting.

Professor Nicola Palazzolo, Director of the Italian National Research Council, said: “The full knowledge of quality legal information empowers citizens to exercise in a conscious and effective way their rights. In this way, new technologies become an irreplaceable tool of democracy for the citizens of the e-society.”

A number of Commonwealth countries have ‘Law Information Institutes’ (LIIs) which facilitate access to public legal information over the internet. These include AustLII (Australia), CanLII (Canada) and SafLII (South Africa). Complementing these national institutes are regional ones such as AsianLII (Asia) and PacLII (Pacific), as well as global ones, such as CommonLII (Commonwealth) and WorldLII.

By being able to access these websites, citizens have free and immediate access to laws, case-laws and other related information, and in a few clicks, may become more fully appraised of their rights.

Key Links:

• Law