- Developments in Human Rights Law and the New Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information: The New Human Rights-Advocacy Approach and the Ten Criteria for the Formal Recognition of New Human Rights (Volume 1) eBook and Book (Paperback)
- The New Human Rights-Based Huricompatisation Model of Ascertainment of Indigenous Customary Law: Strategies for Adequate Local and Global Public Access (Volume 2) eBook and Book (Paperback)
- Innovative Technological Mechanisms for Adequate Web-Based Access to National and Global Public Legal Information (Volume 3) eBook and Book (Paperback)
- A Model Empirical Study of the Current State of Governmental Provision of Free Access to Nigerian Public Legal Information (Volume 4) eBook and Book (Paperback)
Innovative Technological Mechanisms for Adequate Web-Based Access to National and Global Public Legal Information
By Dr. Leesi Ebenezer Mitee, PhD in international human rights law, legal information technology (legal informatics), indigenous customary law and indigenous rights
ISBN 9789083108513 (eBook)
ISBN 9789083108582 (Paperback)
Publisher: Koinonia Legal Research and Book Publishing, Tilburg, The Netherlands
This book, Innovative Technological Mechanisms for Adequate Web-Based Access to National and Global Public Legal Information (Volume 3 of the Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information Book Series), examines the use of a new legal information generic top-level domain as a viable tool for easy identification of official legal information websites and enhancing global public access to their resources. This intervention is necessary because of the existence of unofficial legal information websites with issues of reliability and the overdependence on Internet search engines (despite their limitations) as the only means of finding and accessing official legal information websites. The existing findability difficulties create technical unavailability of available online legal information. This book proffers a workable solution to these problems through its proposal for the creation of <.officiallaws> regulated official legal information generic top-level domain by ICANN. It develops a Legal Information Domain Name System exclusively for the official legal information websites of governments and intergovernmental organisations based on the proposed generic top-level domain. The Legal Information Domain Name System extends the ramification of Internet governance within the ICANN framework in respect of official legal information as a universal public brand. The book argues that the generic top-level domain will facilitate easy identification of official sources of online legal information to avoid the risk of relying on unreliable legal resources, enable direct access to official legal information websites without the laborious use of Internet search engines, and enhance their findability even when the search option is used. It concludes that the resultant improved access to the available official online legal information will promote the people’s right of free public access to legal information globally. This will help people to know the laws they are bound to obey (ignorance of which is no excuse), enhance justice under the right to a fair trial, and facilitate national and transnational legal research. It will also promote transparency and accountability in governance and engender the holistic actualisation of the environmental, economic, and social components of sustainable development, among other benefits.
The book also identifies the publishing of fragments of legal information on multiple, isolated official legal information websites as the major factor underlying the existing problems in locating the available official online legal information of all levels of government (national, state, and local). Given this situation, knowledge of the administrative divisions and legal system of a country is often necessary to perform any reliable search for the websites of each legislature, court, government department or agency that contain legal information. Such knowledge usually requires research, which is more demanding should a person wish to know the laws of other countries for transnational academic research, business transactions, migration, tourism, etc. Examination of the official legal information websites of the 60 countries and territories included in this study reveals the existence of this problem in both developed and developing countries. As a response, a novel system of Nationally Networked One-Stop Official Public Legal Information Websites (the NOPLIW system) is developed in this book, and argued to be the definitive solution to the global problems outlined. The NOPLIW system guarantees the availability of the whole stock of the legal information of a legislative jurisdiction on one single website (the NOPLIW for that jurisdiction) and also easy accessibility of all the NOPLIWs of a country via an exhaustive index. Therefore, the NOPLIW system will provide optimum access to the official online legal information of any country, the aggregation of which is seamless access to global legal information. It will thereby promote good knowledge of the law, which has many benefits for individuals, organisations, and the state itself. Governments at all levels, intergovernmental organisations that create legal information, and developers of their official legal information websites will benefit immensely from the NOPLIW concept, its implementation mechanism, and the policy framework proposed in this book.
The Academic Article-Style Independent but Interconnected Chapters of the Book
Chapter 18: Historical Overview of Publishing Laws in Nigeria eBook