e-Law — Meeting No.
5
I. The framework for units 5-6
- The compilation and
dissemination of codes
- Statutes
- Regulations
- Local ordinances
- How codes differ from
case law
- The two-way relationship
between codes and case law
- Institutional structures,
public private relationships, and markets (present and potential)
- Pre-digital publication
arrangements (e.g., Delaware, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota,
Tennessee -- West's NRS and Michie Annotated Code)
II. How codes differ from case law
- As a body of data or
information
- How old law is treated
- How the corpus is
organized
- Granularity
- In terms of the legal
information and service needs of the source
- Legislative drafting
staff versus judges and their clerks
- e.g., ME
- In terms of the work
patterns and information needs of lawyers and relationship to case law
- In terms of copyright
and other forms of public control of dissemination
- In relation to audiences
other than lawyers
- Law and the public
library - e.g., MN
- A proposition to consider:
There is no excuse for a state not placing a highly functional, official version
of its compiled statutes on the Web, and allowing commercial redistribution
without permission.
III. A range of state statute dissemination
behaviors (best practices?)
- Is
there any copyright claim asserted that a for-profit redistributor would have
to consider?
- How are amendments and
obsolete provisions handled?
- Is there a clear path
to not-yet-compiled provisions?
- What is said about the
status of the online version vis-a-vis printed versions?
- If combined with an
adequate case law source would this be an adequate tool for state legal research?
- Other important criteria?
- Granularity (link
and browsing friendly versus download and print friendly)
- Stable and transparent
URL structure - e.g., OK Divorce
Law
IV. Where a state has done a "good job" what is the pay off, if
any, for professional users or the public more generally?
- Under what circumstances,
if any, can the lawyer match her state's online code with a commercial case
law source and realize any saving in legal research costs? (VersusLaw?
What about annotations? Compare VersusLaw
with Fastcase.)
- Under what circumstances,
if any, can a commercial legal information provider realize efficiency and
functionality gains that can, in theory, be passed on to its subscribers?
(Fastcase?)
V. Next week (compiled codes [statutes,
regulations, local ordinances] and the different issues they raise)
- Readings
- Assigned: Veeck v.
Southern Building Code Congress Int'l, Inc., evaluation of one state's compiled
regulations Web
site (in the light of today's discussion), cursory review of two municipal
code sites
- There is no required
written submission bearing on our discussion, but before break I want
a short statement of your proposed paper project. That should consist at minimum
of:
- One paragraph describing
its scope
- A second paragraph
outlining a research plan
- Our discussion, next
week will have two components: