English
law and Scots law are based on acts passed by Parliament and by
decisions made by courts which other courts must follow, which is
called common law. But many of the rulings which make up the body
of common law across the UK are very old and only published by
commercial law publishers.
BAILII (the British And
Irish Legal Information Institute) has said, though, that it will
publish nearly 3,000 of the most important rulings, as chosen by
academics, for free by this summer.
BAILII executive director Joe Ury told technology law podcast
OUT-LAW Radio that the copyright in
judgments dating back into the nineteenth century is disputed, and
that often the only records of them are those published by
commercial publishers, who claim that they own the rights in the
rulings.
"What we have now is various publishers and transcribers
claiming copyright interest in the bulk of judgments that go back
into the nineteenth century," said Ury.
To provide access to these documents BAILII founded the Open Law
Project with support from academic computing funding body the Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC).
"We felt that if any judgments should be freed so that the
public can have access to them it should be this core of judgments,
which basically make up the judgment side of the common law
system," said Ury. "It seems natural that a member of the public
should be able to find out what that reasoning is, it shouldn't be
cloaked in secrecy."
The project approached academics at universities all over the UK
and asked them to list the most important rulings in their area of
expertise. It then sought permission to publish those rulings one
by one.
"It's been a long slog," said Ury. He said that the project was
returned a list of 2,600 judgments, and that it has now published
1,900 of those. He said that in total it will publish 2,900
verdicts by June of this year when the project ends.
"These are considered to be the most important judgments in
these areas of law," said Ury.
