Popularizing the law

Law.Gov
"...the primary legal materials of the United States should be readily available to all, and that governmental institutions should make these materials available in bulk as distributed, authenticated, well-formatted data..." - Law.Gov.; Resource.Org.

A Proposed Distributed Repository
of All Primary Legal Materials
of the United States
law.gov


see - http://ht.ly/2YkTt

Law.Gov is an idea, an idea that the primary legal materials of the United States should be readily available to all, and that governmental institutions should make these materials available in bulk as distributed, authenticated, well-formatted data. To make this idea a reality, a series of workshops were held throughout the country, resulting in a consensus on 10 core principles.

LAW.GOV PRINCIPLES AND DECLARATION

The primary legal materials of the United States are the raw materials of our democracy. They should be made more broadly available to enable an informed citizenry.

Primary legal materials include documents of primary authority issued by governmental bodies, such as court opinions, statutes, and regulations. They also include the supporting documents and other media issued and maintained by those bodies, such as dockets, hearings, forms, oral arguments, and legislative histories. These materials can be found in every branch, at every level, national, tribal, state and local, and should be available to anyone with the will and the heart to obtain them.

The following principles should govern the dissemination of primary legal materials in the United States:
law.gov logo

1. Direct fees for dissemination of primary legal materials should be avoided.
2. Limitations on access through terms of use or the assertion of copyright on primary legal materials is contrary to long-standing public policy and core democratic principles and is misleading to citizens.
3. Primary legal materials should be made available using bulk access mechanisms so they may be downloaded by anyone.
4. The primary legal materials, and the methods used to access them, should be authenticated so people can trust in the integrity of these materials.
5. Historical archives should be made available online and in a static location to the extent possible.
6. Vendor- and media-neutral citation mechanisms should be employed.
7. Technical standards for document structure, identifiers, and metadata should be developed and applied as extensively as possible.
8. Data should be distributed in a computer-processable, non-proprietary form in a manner that meets best current practices for the distribution of open government data. That data should represent the definitive documents, not just aggregate, preliminary, or modified forms.
9. An active program of research and development should be sponsored by governmental bodies that issue primary legal materials to develop new standards and solutions to challenges presented by the electronic distribution of definitive primary legal materials. Examples include the automated detection and redaction of private personal information in documents.
10. An active program of education, training, and documentation should be undertaken to help governmental bodies that issue primary legal materials learn and use best current practices.

Adherence to these principles by governmental bodies is not just good for democracy and justice, it will spur innovation and will encourage:

1. Broader use of legal materials in all parts of our education system, including our law schools.
2. Researchers in law schools, universities, and other research institutions to have broader access to bulk data, spurring important research on the functioning of our government.
3. Innovation in the legal information market by reducing barriers to entry.
4. Savings in the government's own cost of providing these materials through adherence to best current practices.
5. Small businesses to understand rules and regulations they must deal with, reducing their costs and increasing their effectiveness.
6. Increased foreign trade by making it easier for our foreign partners to understand our laws.
7. Better access to justice by making legal information more broadly available to citizens.

How we distribute the raw materials of our democracy is a foundational issue in our system of government. Access to the raw materials of our democracy is a prerequisite for the rule of law and access to justice and makes real the principles of equal protection and due process.

With the Consent of the Co-Convenors of Law.Gov:

Jack M. Balkin Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment Yale Law School
Robert C. Berring, Jr. Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law Berkeley Law,
University of California
James Boyle William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law Duke Law School
Nicholas Bramble Postdoctoral Associate in Law Yale Law School
Tom R. Bruce Director, Legal Information Institute Cornell Law School
Richard A. Danner Archibald C. & Frances Fulk Rufty Research Professor of Law Duke Law School
Laura E. DeNardis Executive Director, Information Society Project Yale Law School
Edward W. Felten Professor of Computer Science & Public Affairs Princeton University
Jerry Goldman Professor & Director, Oyez Project Northwestern University
Joseph Lorenzo Hall Visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate UC Berkeley and Princeton University
Jennifer Jenkins Director, Center for the Study of the Public Domain Duke Law School Mitchell Kapor Trustee Mitchell Kapor Foundation
S. Blair Kauffman Law Librarian and Professor of Law Yale Law School
Mark A. Lemley William H. Neukom Professor of Law Stanford Law School
Lawrence Lessig Professor of Law Harvard Law School
Paul Lomio Director, Robert Crown Law Stanford Law School
Carl Malamud President Public.Resource.Org
Harry S. Martin III Librarian & Professor of Law Emeritus Harvard Law School
Peter W. Martin Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law Cornell Law School
John Mayer Executive Director Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction
Judy Meadows State Law Librarian State Law Library of Montana
Paul Ohm Associate Professor of Law and Telecommunications University of Colorado Law School
Tim O'Reilly Chief Executive Officer O'Reilly Media
John G. Palfrey Henry N. Ess III Librarian & Professor of Law Harvard Law School
Pamela Samuelson Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law Berkeley Law, University of California
Stuart Sierra Assistant Director, Program on Law and Technology Columbia Law School
Stephen Schultze Associate Director, Center for Information Technology Policy Princeton University
Tim Stanley Chief Executive Officer Justia
Erika V. Wayne Deputy Director, Robert Crown Law Library Stanford Law School Christopher Wong Postgraduate Fellow New York Law School
Tim Wu Professor of Law Columbia Law School
Harlan Yu Doctoral Student in Computer Science Princeton University
Jonathan Zittrain Professor of Law & Computer Science Harvard Law School