Making the text of our law, the operating system of our government, freely available

[Zeno Swijtink]

From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall

Carl Malamud has tirelessly spearheaded an effort over the past year or so to make US law, the operating system of our government, freely available. Carl has just released a consensus set of principles signed by an amazing set of law, policy and transparency thinkers that outlines what principles our government should adhere to in making primary legal sources increasingly available to citizens:

Law.Gov: America's Operating System, Open Source.

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 https://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 Library 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

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Joseph Lorenzo Hall
ACCURATE Postdoctoral Research Associate
UC Berkeley School of Information
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
Joseph Lorenzo Hall's Web Page

[pnicholson]

i love this. thanks for posting.

what an ambitious undertaking this was and what a timely and worthy concept: transparency. wish it would have been treated as a self-evident necessity 100 years ago. but i welcome it now enthusiastically.

good for these guys - they have certainly merited my gratitude.