Law student, Robb Shecter, who has created the OregonLaws.Org web site, wrote us recently about the fact that California Codes have accessibility issues:

The California Codes are published online (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html) with crucial information absent (removed?) that renders them nearly impossible to use:

No Section names ("leadlines") are present in this version-for-the-public. For example, the Sections relevant to the California Highway Patrol are presented like this:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&group=02001-03...

The sections are thus relatively unusable, greatly increasing the cost of legal research and defeating access and transparency for nearly all people. The missing information is also crucial for third parties (like me) who'd like to create easy-to-use directories of the codes.

The needed information does seem to exist, however.  The names for this particular section, for example, can be found on the DMV website, for example:

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/vc/tocd2c2a2.htm

Those DMV pages are unfortunately the exception that proves the rule. After seeing these Section names, it should be immediately obvious that these represent a crucial element of the codes that should be published along with the codes.

Oregon once again claims that law is copyrighted, by Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, October 30, 2009.

The Oregon Attorney General has asserted ownership over the "Attorney General's Public Record" and "Public Meeting Manual."

See also:

• The Oregon Question: What is the copyright status of primary legal materials governing the actions of the citizens of Oregon?, Carl Malamud, Public.Resource.Org.
• Oregon Tries Claiming Copyright Over Gov't Materials Again, by Mike Masnick, techdirt, Oct 30th 2009.

The Law Library of Congress's Global Legal Monitor has added more than 300 topic and jurisdictional RSS feeds.

Topics include the Census, Freedom of Information, Government Publications, Intellectual Property, Libraries, and Secrecy!

There is also an RSS for all articles in the Global Legal Monitor too.

Tip o' the hate to Resource Shelf.

In an interview in the Connecticut Law Tribune, Darcy Kirk, associate dean for library and technology and professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, addresses some of the potential dangers of digital-only legal information.

• Are There Drawbacks to Law Libraries Going Digital?, By Thomas B. Scheffey, The Connecticut Law Tribune, (reprinted at Law.com) February 18, 2009.

She outlines a number of concerns:

• A concern that the information won't be permanently available as technology changes. "If the government agency or court doesn't plan before the current format goes out of use, we could lose the ability to access those publications."
• A concern that a government agency or a court, publishing online, might decide on its own what to delete. "Then, all of a sudden you don't have it online and you don't have it in print, either."
• A concern about the Google Book project because "Google is a for-profit entity. We're not. Google is interested in things that might ultimately make them some money."

These are not exactly problems of digital vs. paper; they are issues of control. When government agencies, courts, and the private sector insist on controlling what is online and what is not, libraries have no control over what is available. The simple solution is for libraries to build their own digital collections. This allows libraries to treat the information as a community resource and empowers the library to manage that information as a community resource and maintain that resource to match the needs of the community.

Free public access to legal information has a long history going back to the earliest days of the Web. John Wonderlich describes some of the background in Legal Information as a Global Movement (Open House Project, May 27th, 2008), which also includes 3 videos about the movement. This is excellent, informative, and inspiring!

Tom Bruce describes still more of the history here.

While there is an abundance of state legal resources (laws, regulations, court opinions, etc), in most cases they can't be used in courts of law or for other legal purposes because its the print version that is considered "legally official."

The American Association of Law Libraries has just released this new 50 state report outlining the status of online legal materials:

State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources

This report was released in conjunction with the National Summit on Authentication of Digital Information, which AALL held April 20-21 in Chicago. According to AALL, The 50 delegates who participated in this event were a distinguished group of individuals: judges, state government officials, attorneys, and leaders of AALL and of other organizations, such as the American Bar Association. They were invited because of their interest and expertise in some aspect of legal/government information.

Proceedings from the summit will shortly be posted to the AALL web site.