Enabling Free On-line Access to UK Law Reports: The Copyright Problem

Leith, Philip; Fellows, Cynthia

doi:10.1093/ijlit/eap001

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Besides, as I tried to show, it is difficult to conceive that the computational analysis would engage with (let alone reproduce) judgments in the jurisprudential sense. It is thus equally difficult to justify control over access to judgments as bulk data by reference to copyright, regardless of whether the access and usage rights concerning 'jurisprudential' judgment are determined by judges (McCloud, 2021: [11]), parties' counsels and solicitors (Vos et al, 2022), the private publishers (see Leith and Fellows, 2009), The National Archives (2022c), the BAILII (2022), the UK Government (2022) or by those who first get hold of a judgment transcription (HM Courts & Tribunals Service, 2022).…”

Section: The Way Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgments as bulk data

Janeček

2023

Big Data & Society

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Should court judgments be publicly available for text and data mining purposes? This article shows that the arguments for and against access to judgments conflate different understandings of what judgments are. On one view, judgments are seen as a ‘jurisprudential’ category, whereas the other view regards them as something ‘factual’. Once it is understood that these views and the claims based on them do not fight over the same territory, it should be easier to make judgments more widely available, including for the purposes of computational analysis of judgments as bulk data. The purpose of this article is to help to clear the ground for the debate around access to judgments as bulk data and highlight some relevant considerations for the preferred licencing regime concerning judgments.

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Section: The Way Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgments as bulk data

Janeček

2023

Big Data & Society

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“…278 In England and Wales for example, there exists a highly fragmented data environment in which the publication of legal decisions has been privatized since inception, with "law reporters and publishers tak[ing] the view that the copy of the judge's text which they hold is their intellectual property." 279 As such, the work of bringing together and providing free and open access to legal judgments has been left to charitable organizations, such as the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII). 280 Even taking into account resources such as PACER in the U.S., BAILII in the U.K., or the Australian equivalent (AUSTLII), 281 we observe less effort directed towards preserving or making accessible a whole range of potentially useful data collected by public agencies, including e-bundles and administrative data.…”

Section: B Access To Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Devil in the Detail: Mitigating the Constitutional & Rule of Law Risks Associated with the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Domain

et al. 2018

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Over the last decade increased emphasis has been placed on the role that artificial intelligence (AI) will play in disrupting the practice of law. Although considerable attention has been given to the practical task of designing a computer to "think like a lawyer," a number of related issues merit further inquiry. Of these, the risks that AI presents to the constitutionally protected procedural and substantive dimensions of justice deserve particular attention. In this Article, we consider the public and private application of AI in the administration of justice and the provision of legal services. We observe that the imposition of AI in certain legal contexts and settings has the potential to silence discourse between actors and agents, subvert the rule of law, and directly and indirectly threaten constitutional rights. In substantiating these observations, we begin in Part I by contextualizing recent developments in legal technology. Tracing the evolution of rule-based AI approaches through to modern data-driven techniques, in Part II we explore how AI systems have sought to represent law, drawing on the domains of: (a) judicial interpretation and reasoning; (b) bargaining and transacting; and (c) enforcement and compliance, and we illustrate how these representations have been constrained by the AI approach used. In Part III we assess the use of AI in legal services, focusing specifically on implications that are posed in respect of the protection of constitutional rights and adherence to the rule of law. Finally, in Part IV we examine the pragmatic challenges that arise in balancing the risks and rewards of AI technologies in the legal domain, and we

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“…Cases are more available than they once were, but not all cases appear in electronic format, and there have been occasions where transcripts have been withheld by the courts. 29 The maintenance of electronic records in the UK is one part of the work of the National Archives. 30 A suite of tools and protocols have been developed for government bodies to manage their electronic records and documents.…”

Section: Technical Issues: Access Format Maintenance Archivingmentioning

confidence: 99%