WorldLIIs International Courts

1
WorldLIIs International Courts Tribunals
Project Responding to the fragmentation of
international law

• Presentation by
• Philip Chung Andrew Mowbray
• Co-Directors, AustLII WorldLII
• 6th Conference on Law via the Internet Paris,
  3-5 November, 2004

2
Fragmentation

• Pre-WWII - Decisions were from a small number of
  international tribunals
• Post-WWII - Fragmentation of international law
  decisions
• Regional tribunals
• Human rights tribunals
• International trade tribunals
• Criminal courts
• Now over 30 significant ICTs

3
Effect of the Internet

• Most ICTs have put decisions on line
• But fragmentation has remained
• 30 websites, no consolidation
• Often no search engine on site (30)
• Often not searchable via Google (30)
• Often not HTML, few navigation aids (25)

4
WorldLIIs International Courts Tribunals (ICT)
Project

• A response to fragmentation
• All final decisions of ICTs searchable together
• Interim decisions not included
• Consistent formatting of decisions
• Eg Context links to search terms
• Consistent citation system
• Eg McELHINNEY v. IRELAND 2001 ECHR 754

5
Collaborative project by LIIs

• Decentralisation wherever practical
• Regional decisions on regional LIIs
• Eg ECJ is on BAILII
• French language decisions on Droit Francophone
• Most decisions currently located on WorldLII
• Exploring methods of distributing data between
  LIIs

6
Content of the ICT project

• Near-complete decisions of 20 ICTs
• But French, Spanish etc still being added
• Over 20,000 full text decisions
• Other content being added
• Scanning text of PCIJ image decisions
• Other international criminal courts
• Database of Court statutes, rules etc
• Now for a demonstration

7
A few things demonstrated

• Scope of searches
• Default is to search all decisions
• Popular combinations of databases provided
• Individual Courts or combinations can be chosen
• Easy to go directly to a case (use v)
• Easy to note up a case (use near)
• Searches can be repeated over larger collections

8
Sustainability

• Thanks to all the ICTs for cooperation
• Australian Research Council funding to capture
  the backsets of decisions
• Ongoing funding
• Requires at least one person to maintain
• Possible collaboration with PiCT (Project on
  International Courts Tribunals)
• That was the official launch