Posts By Rob Richards

Yates & Shapiro, Establishing a Sustainable Legal Information System in a Developing Country: A Practical Guide

Professor Dr. Kenneth A. Yates of University of Southern California Rossier School of Education and Charles E. Shapiro have published Establishing a Sustainable Legal Information System in a Developing Country: A Practical Guide, Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, v. 42, article no. 8 (2010). Here is the abstract: In this paper, aRead… Read more »

New UK eParticipation Effort: Top Direct.gov.uk ePetitions to Become Legislation

In 2011, the most popular citizen-created petitions on the Direct.gov.uk Website will be drafted as legislation in the UK Parliament, and petitions receiving a certain level of support will be guaranteed a debate in the House of Commons, according to stories in The Guardian and The Financial Times published 28 December 2010. This ePetition measureRead… Read more »

Applications Invited for State Justice Institute Grants

Applications are invited — with submission deadline of 1 February 2011 for the second quarter of fiscal year 2011 — for grants offered by the State Justice Institute (SJI). SJI offers grants to fund improvements in justice administration in U.S. state courts. Grant categories of interest to the legal informatics and legal communication communities includeRead… Read more »

Jones on A User Registration System for Regulations.gov

Gregory D. Jones has published a comment entitled Electronic Rulemaking in the New Age of Openness: Proposing a Voluntary Two-Tier Registration System for Regulations.gov, Administrative Law Review, v. 62, no. 4 (2010), pp. 1261-1286. Here is a summary: This Comment argues that a voluntary two-tiered registration system that acknowledges the role of interest groups inRead… Read more »

Palfrey on The Path of Legal Information

Vice Dean John G. Palfrey of the Harvard Law School recently gave a lecture entitled The Path of Legal Information, on 9 November 2010, at the Harvard Law School. In his lecture, Dean Palfrey proposes the development of an open, interoperable system of digital legal information, and describes possible consequences of such a system forRead… Read more »

New Law-Related Citizens’ Participation Project: Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review

The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) is a recent, notable, law-related, citizens’ participation effort. The CIR convenes a representative group of Oregon citizens to devote one week to learning about, deliberating about, and voting on a proposed Oregon ballot initiative. Statements expressing the group’s votes, and the stated reasons for their votes, are then includedRead… Read more »

New Source of Free U.S. Court Decisions: Weekly Report of Current Opinions (RECOP)

In 2011, Public.Resource.Org will publish a weekly release — called the Report of Current Opinions (RECOP) — of all slip and final opinions — in HTML — “of the appellate and supreme courts of the 50 [U.S.] states and the [U.S.] federal government,” according to a new post by Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org. According toRead… Read more »

Free Law Compliance Project: The Law.Gov Legal Bug Tracker

The Legal Bug Tracker — an open source database of the National Inventory of Legal Materials — for recording instances in which U.S. jurisdictions do not conform to the free access to law principles advanced by the Law.gov legal open government data movement — is now operating, according to a recent post by Carl MalamudRead… Read more »