Denise Howell, obviously all but consumed by ennui, has some nice things to say about my case citation-to-URL translator. I haven’t updated it for some time, but it’s something that I should get around to doing one weekend.
What makes an Australian version somewhat useful is the prevalence of medium-neutral citations among all Australian courts. This is a really great idea, although there’s still a preference (e.g.) for citations to the authorised reports for cases. I think the various LIIs—AustLII, BAILII, et al.—have done a lot of good work in this regard. I noticed recently that Canada’s courts have taken a toke from the media-neutral citation pipe, too.
In fact, on the front page of BAILII at the moment, there’s a link to a speech by Lord Justice Brooke about Judgments and Public Information on the Internet. After noting that Australia is a world leader,
I first started to become interested in issues concerned with IT and the law in 1985, and I was very struck even then by the way that Australia was forging ahead. So far as the United States were concerned, we might as well have been on another planet. For many years I was very conscious that those two countries were miles ahead of us in using applied computer technology in aid of the courts.
Lord Justice Brooke singles out AustLII for particular praise:
One of the reasons I have mentioned [the process leading to the Court of Appeal’s decision in Bannister v SGB plc] … was that it introduced me for the first time to the work of the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII). If you read our judgment in Bannister v SGB plc you will see that we refer to it with admiration at the start.
The pioneering work of AustLII is based at two Australian universities. AustLII was founded on the principle that everyone should have access to the law of their country free of charge. By the law of a country I mean not only statute law and statutory instruments but also caselaw. A visitor to the AustLII database will have immediate free access to masses of statutes and to the judgments not only of the courts in Australia but also of important tribunal jurisdictions. By the use of their complex software large quantities of new material could be integrated into the database very quickly by automatic processes.
Lord Justice Brooke sees the increasing availability of cases as, on balance a good thing. It increases the knowledge of the law for citizens, lawyers, and the judiciary. It increases the likelihood of accurate press comment. But, as Lord Justice Brooke describes, care needs to be taken not to fall victim to information overload: citing recent cases for no other reason than they are a recent case on point.
But Lord Justice Brooke’s speech makes clear that it requires cooperation from the judiciary. It makes less clear that it also requires cooperation from those who see the diminution (or elimination) of revenue streams—Thomson Lawbook Co. and LexisNexis (née Butterworths), I’m looking at you.
It’s almost a Napster for the legal publishing community: publishing companies being forced to demonstrate value or develop new revenue streams in the face of the increasing use of the Internet.
