Free Access to Law Movement explained

The Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) is the international organization devoted to providing free online access to legal information such as case law, legislation, treaties, law reform proposals and legal scholarship. The movement began in 1992 with the creation of the Legal Information Institute (LII) by Thomas R. Bruce and Peter W. Martin at Cornell Law School.^[1] Some later FALM projects incorporate Legal Information Institute or LII in their names, usually prefixed by a national or regional identifier.

Membership

The FALM website lists 63 active members as of July 2017, together with the coverage (geographical area or political grouping) for which each member provides databases, and the year in which it became a member of FALM, as well as links to member websites.^[2]

Declaration

In October 2002 the meeting of LIIs in Montreal at the 4th Law via Internet Conference, made the following declaration^[3] as a joint statement of their philosophy of access to law. There were some further modifications of the Declaration at the Sydney meeting of LIIs in 2003^[4] and at the Paris meeting in 2004.^[5]

See also

• Comparative law wiki
• Legal awareness
• Ravel Law
• Free Law Project

References

• Galindo, F 'Free Access to the Law in Latin America: Brasil, Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay as Examples' in Peruginelli and Ragona (Eds), 2009
• Greenleaf, G 'Legal Information Institutes and the Free Access to Law Movement', GlobaLex website, February 2008 - This article includes brief histories of all FALM Members to 2008.
• Greenleaf G 'Free access to legal information, LIIs, and the Free Access to Law Movement', Chapter in Danner, R and Winterton, J (eds.) IALL International Handbook of Legal Information Management. Aldershot, Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2011 - This chapter updates information about some FALM members to 2011, but is not comprehensive.
• Peruginelli, G and Ragona, M Law via the Internet: Free Access, Quality of Information, Effectiveness of Rights (Proc. IX International Conference 'Law via the Internet'), European Press Academic Publishing, Florence, 2009
• Poulin, D (2004) 'Open access to law in developing countries' First Monday vol. 9, no 12, 6 December 2004

Notes and References

1. Web site: Myers . Linda. Cornell Chronicle. 27 April 2000. CU Law Institute Web Site has Latest Legal Information . 7 July 2015.
2. Web site: Members of the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM).
3. See WorldlII
4. The amendments were: (i) in the title of the Declaration, 'public' was changed to 'free'; (ii) the words 'where possible' were deleted from the second bullet point 'where possible, free of charge'; (iii) addition of the description of a legal information institute and the encouragement to participate in networks; and (iv) addition of the final bullet point about an annual meeting to the list of areas of agreed cooperation.
5. The amendments were: (i) the words "It also includes legal documents created as a result of public funding." were added to the end of para 2 after 'boards of enquiry': (ii) the words "To provide to the end users of public legal information clear information concerning any conditions of re-use of that information, where this is feasible." were added to the final list of bullet points.