Anita Jowitt Director PacLII Contact jowitt_a@vanuatu.usp.ac.fj BRIDGING THE GAPS BETWEEN PUBLISHING LAW, ACADEMIC RESEARCH AND COMMUNITY LEGAL LITERACY: THE POTENTIAL PLACE OF PACLII Anita Jowitt Director PacLII Contact jowitt_a@vanuatu.usp.ac.fj

PacLII’s Core Business Promoting access to justice via free access to law Publishing primary legal material Editorial team is sent or collects material, formats material, uploads material, checks material

Underlying principles Free access to the law is an important aspect of access to justice and supports the rule of law Free access to the law should be a core responsibility of governments As part of sovereignty independent countries should take as much control as they can/want to in ensuring free access to the law

Taking more control: stages Supply content to PacLII and have PacLII do everything Supply content to PacLII, have PacLII format and upload, and then content producers check the uploaded content Format documents in the PacLII templates, then have PacLII staff upload and check the uploaded content Format documents in the PacLII templates, then have PacLII staff upload, then content producers check the uploaded content Format document in the PacLII templates, and upload material via remote upload, then PacLII staff check the uploads Format document in the PacLII templates, upload material via remote upload, check the uploads, with PacLII as back-up if help is needed

Publishing questions for PacLII & Content Generators Are there more things that countries can do for themselves, with PacLII as central infrastructure & helpdesk provider? Preparing documents for upload Uploading documents Checking uploaded documents Would countries prefer to pay PacLII to do everything for them? Answer may vary by jurisdiction Which is more cost & resource efficient?

Is publishing laws enough? Law Via The Internet Conference 2016 Conference of Global Free Access to Law Movement Access to “raw data” is not the same as “meaningful access” Too much material, even for lawyers Cf traditional law reporting: head notes; digests Cf traditional legislation publishing: consolidations; annotations For non-lawyers it is hard to understand the “raw data” Legal literacy material

CanLII Connects: Blog for summaries & commentaries Approved community of users (lawyers) No particular control over what cases get commented on/who comments Some editorial oversight Main oversight is that other users can flag inappropriate material Linked to the CanLII case/legislation

http://canliiconnects.org/en/

CanLII content

CanLII Connects & PacLII Possible way of: Generating headnotes Generating legislation summaries Publishing user generated unofficial consolidations …

AustLII Communities: Wiki for building content Approved community of users Specific project based (ie NT Law Handbook) More coordination – sections defined and assigned Some ongoing commitment for updating sections Can be exported for printing

http://austlii.community/foswiki/NTLawHbk/NTLawHandbook

AustLII Communities & PacLII Possible way of: Generating SoL Handbooks Transferring SoL course material into public domain legal literacy material Creating collaborative textbooks Creating collaborative legal literacy material…

HKLII CLIC: Virtual community legal centres Website with static information More traditional project team Possible to build in place for public to ask questions if there are people as “service back-up”

http://www.clic.org.hk/en/

HKLII & PacLII Possible way of Building virtual community legal centre Collating & publishing existing legal literacy material…

What else could be done? User communities’ imagination & commitment is the limit PacLII can help to develop, host and coordinate ideas Committed user communities need to help by producing the content Take a pilot project approach Try things and see; some might not work & that is ok

Example pilot: PCN Pacific Constitutions Research Network hosted on PacLII A community to increase academic research & outputs on Pacific constitutions Built website User interface via facebook A possible community to Create a digest of constitutional cases? Create briefs for policy makers? Create legal literacy material?

Visualisations? http://ravellaw.com/

Other accessibility issues? Visually impaired users? Html overlaid pdf being developed by CanLII Poor internet connections? SaFLII Pocket: SaFLII saved to datastick Access from datastick exactly like accessing website Whenever person is in an area with good internet the content is updated Converting scanned documents to html?

Next steps? If you are not on PacLII Net newsletter & would like to be leave email on sign-up sheet at back Should there be a Vanuatu PacLII users group established to develop initiatives? Are there particular projects people think PacLII should do?