[open-government] Fwd: Berkman Center: Law.gov Workshops Next Week - Thursday 6/17 and Friday 6/18

Mon Jun 14 19:58:56 UTC 2010

Dear Brian,

very interesting seminar. the assertion of copy right over state law
is more crucial than a liberal FOI legislation. As most US books revealed.

Some feedback from the European continental law:
1. case management does not play an important role in Europe
in contrast to the case law in anglo-saxon countries.

2. but what hinders US-universities to set up an own database
containing federal/states law and all cases?
Is it so tricky or so expensive?

best regards,

Gerhard

At 20:17 14.06.2010, Brian Gryth wrote:
>Jonathan et al.,
>
>I attended the <http://law.gov>law.gov workshop in Boulder, CO in 
>April.  The project is worthwhile and I recommend that people 
>attend.  If for no other reason, than to learn how much legal 
>research costs in the United States and how access to the law is 
>essentially closed off to the public.  Mr. Malmund used a phase 
>something akin to "you have access to the law as long as you have a 
>credit card."  The legal research cartel (i.e Lexis/Nexus and 
>Westlaw) exercises an extreme dominance over the availability to 
>legal research tools and the legal research education programs of US 
>law schools have institutionalized this dominance.  The goal of 
><http://law.gov>law.gov is to open up access and create an ecosystem 
>of innovation and competition in legal research.
>
>Some of the topics or issues discussed in Boulder were:
>
>* The assertion of copy right over state law by some 
>states.  Colorado is one of these states.
>* Authentication of electronic legal resources.
>* Access to legacy or historic materials.  There are thousands of 
>volumes of legal information that is not in an electronic format.
>* The digital divide and electronic access.
>* Better citation practices by courts.  Currently, the dominate form 
>of legal citation in the United States is to a court reporter 
>published by West.
>
>I found that day interesting and productive.  I will say that the 
>one way the <http://law.gov>law.gov movement could get more traction 
>is to help legal practitioners understand how releasing of primarily 
>law data will help improve the practice of law.  The putting it all 
>together portion of the Boulder presentation was practical to legal 
>academic researchers.  The <http://law.gov>law.gov movement will be 
>hampered by the 10x effect until someone can find or present a 
>product that is vastly superior to the cartel's.  At the moment, the 
>cartel's product will allow a practitioner to get his or her job 
>done.  Of course, driving down costs would be the most compelling 
>argument to most practitioners.  (Every law student and legal 
>professional is aware of the $14000 legal research error horror 
>stories told in law school.  An error mostly likely caused simply by 
>going outside your subscription's database or forgetting to log out.)
>
>In any case, I hope someone on this list will attend the Harvard 
>workshop and share their thoughts with the group.
>
>Thanks,
>Brian
>
>2010/6/14 Jonathan Gray 
><<mailto:jonathan.gray at okfn.org>jonathan.gray at okfn.org>
>Very interesting! Would love to hear from anyone who attends.
>
>Jonathan
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Next Thursday (6/17) and Friday (6/18) the Harvard Law School Library
>and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society will host two workshops
>focused on the Law.gov initiative, a proposed registry and repository
>of all primary legal materials of the United States. The workshops,
>organized by Carl Malamud, President of 
><http://public.resource.org/>Public.Resource.Org, aim to
>convene advocates for the public domain, lawyers, policy makers,
>librarians, archivists, students, and all those interested to discuss
>issues around access to primary materials in Massachusetts, and also
>to reflect on the national series of workshops held in the past year
>in order to identify core principles and policy mechanisms for public
>information.
>
>The workshops will feature Carl Malamud, Berkman Faculty Co-Director
>John Palfrey, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, the Honorable
>Dina E. Fein, Boston College Librarian Joan Shear, Harvard Law
>Cyberlaw Clinic Director Phil Malone, and many more.
>
>We hope you will join us for one or both of these events. To learn
>more or register, please visit:
><http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgovMA>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgovMA 
>or
><http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgov>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgov.
>
>More about the workshops:
>
>Law.gov: Massachusetts (6/17)
>
>Do we have access to all primary legal materials in Massachusetts?
>What are the best practices for making information accessible?  What
>obstacles face institutions trying to make it available?  Our hope is
>to create a document outlining the most salient issues in
>accessibility to Massachusetts legal information with suggestions of
>things that could be done to effect the most accessible system
>possible in Massachusetts.
>
><http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgovMA>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgovMA
>
>Law.gov: Putting it All Together (6/18)
>
>The Harvard Law School Law.Gov workshop on June 18 is the last in a
>6-month series of such workshops that have taken place throughout the
>country.  In this final workshop, participants will discuss the
>implications of some core principles about access to primary legal
>materials. Are these principles workable? What will it take to make
>them real? What are the implications of these principles? Our hope is
>that upon completion of this workshop, a crisp set of basic principles
>can be presented and discussed, perhaps leading to the enactment of
>some of these principles into policy through mechanisms such as
>judicial rules, executive orders, or legislation.
>
><http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgov>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgov
>
>Registration and full agendas for both workshops can be found at
><http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgovMA>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgovMA 
>and
><http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgov>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/06/lawdotgov.
>
>= = =
>
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>Jonathan Gray
>
>Community Coordinator
>The Open Knowledge Foundation
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