Law.gov: liberating the American legal code

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

We're setting off some pretty fireworks next week in Washington, D.C. and I wanted to invite people to come watch. Since January, Public.Resource.Org has been organizing Law.Gov workshops all around the country with the help of a stellar cast of co-convenors. Over 500 people have participated in these workshops. The idea of Law.Gov is that government needs to do a much better job of making primary legal materials available. Code is law, law is code, and we think America's operating system ought to be open source.

Next week is the conclusion of the Law.Gov workshops and we're going out with a bang. On Tuesday, John Podesta will be hosting us at the Center for American Progress and the whole thing will be streamed live on the net. There is a really stellar cast of participants including a half-dozen senior administration officials and some well-known net names like Vint Cerf and Tim O'Reilly. Then, on Thursday and Friday, Larry Lessig and John Palfry are hosting us at Harvard for a 2-day wrapup.

Access to the Raw Materials of Our Democracy (Thanks, Carl!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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JohnCJ

This is LONG overdue. Under the current system, only the statutes are available in their entirety online. This is a good start, but America is a Common Law system derived from England. Case law not only provides interpretation on how to apply the statutes, it’s law in its own right.

Right now, if you want to get case law, you are all but forced to sign up with West or LexisNexis. Both are obscenely expensive and well beyond the reach of the average citizen who is not a lawyer sticking the cost on his clients.

It has always galled me that such a large chink of our government was stuck behind the pay-walls of private enterprise.

That said, I trust the government to do the right thing by making access universal but I’m not sure if I can trust the government to do it competently.

I wish Google would make a Google Law (rather than Google Scholar). I would love to see the Duopoly of West and LexisNexis sweat.