LexisNexis Rule of Law Resource Center
As Kate mentioned in an earlier post, I spent most of last week in Johannesburg, South Africa on a site visit with the Southern Africa Litigation Center, which is using the Pro Bono Net template to support their work providing technical legal assistance and litigation support to advocates in the region who are working on media defense and freedom of expression issues. Having spent nearly two years in Southern Africa, as a student, teacher, legal advocate and law clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, I was excited to reconnect with friends and colleagues and hear about the progress that has been made since I was last there.
Overall I was impressed by the advances made in the legal services sector (having one of the finest constitutions in the world helps). But one area that has yet to come into its own is meaningful access to legal information, which was of course part of the reason for my visit. To that end, I wanted to share a resource that has great potential for developing regions such as Southern Africa: the Rule of Law Resource Center. An initiative of LexisNexis, the Rule of Law Resource Center represents "the single largest, most credible and authoritative collection of Rule of Law resources on the internet."
Among the resources highlighted in the collection is an article by Daniel Poulin entitled "Open access to law in developing countries." Another is an article by Graham Greenleaf called "Legal Information Institutes and the Free Access to Law Movement." And finally, a blog post from Out of the Jungle, which defends the practice of open access archiving. What each of these resources highlights is the need for opening access to free legal information and developing sustainable models for the collection and dissemination of legal information, including a call for more attention to developing countries where the need is arguably the greatest.
I would encourage all of you to take some time to explore these resources. Not only do they provide a compelling framework for more meaningful access to legal information in other countries, they may also teach you something about your own work and how we might provide better access to free legal information in our community. -M
