MAXIMIZING OPEN ACCESS TO SUPREME COURT DECSIONS SantosMilagros Santos-Ong

Director, Supreme Court Library Services

Full-text or the complete text of the two sources of law: laws (statutes) and jurisprudence (court decisions or case law) is the answer to the information needs of the legal profession and the public. This is best evidenced by the proliferation of commercial and open access databases for Philippine law. . From these two sources of law, case law or the decisions of the Supreme Court have are most needed. These decisions promulgated from the Arellano Court to present, are continuous throughout the different periods in our countrys history. Even decisions during the Japanese period are recognized and are found in the Philippine Reports. Statutes differ per period: Acts (1901-1035), Commonwealth Acrs (1935-1945), Republic Act (1946 to present); Presidential Decrees (1973-1981) AND Batas Pambansa (1981-1985) The importance of decisions of the Supreme Court could be seen with efforts made by the developers of both the commercial and open access system. For the commercial databases like those of CD Asia, the price for case law databases is double than the laws or statutes. E-Scra is purely decisions of the Court. For the open access such as Chanrobles, and Lawphil, the case laws are more complete than the laws. SC E-Library is complete for both sources of law from 1901-present. fullopen How can full-text open access be maximized? 1. Know the needs of the users The design and applications, whether commercial or open access Legal Databases are based on the user needs and their research capabilities. Why full-text? The easier method could be subject index, abstracts, party to the case, etc. Full-text is the best for the legal profession for every word or phrase or sentence may have a different interpretation on application for every undertaking. Librarians and IT people should BOND TOGETHER to be able to design a databases that will answer the needs of the legal profession and those handling legal information. Lawyers, law graduates, paralegals can provide inputs to Librarians and IT people. The design and applications must be user friendly. Lawyers, specially the older one are afraid to use computers or afraid that with a click, things will be erased. For the public, the people in search for law or Supreme Court decisions are not the youth, they are the young once so to speak. Thus, the style designed must conform as much as possible with the way they think.

2. Public awareness on its availability and how it is used

www.judiciary.gov.ph People must know they do exists and how to use them. The different modes are a. Seminars, forums, etc. b. Advertisements through newspapers, newsletters, gazettes, etc. c. Word of mouth

www.chanrobles.com

www.lawphil.net 3. Make sure that the data are accurate

a.Source of the data - It is recommended that they must get their data from official sources. Commercial databases such as CD Asia Jurisprudence and eSCRA or SCRA get their data directly from the Supreme Court Open Source Big question is where do they get theirs? SC E-Library b. Define ones limitations Up-to-dateness of information vs. quality c. Policy - In case of discrepancy between the hard copy and the soft copy, the hard copy prevails. No open sources database as of now uses image files. 1. Make sure that the information is always up-to-date

The general rule in Legal Research is start your research from the latest EXCEPT only when there is a definite period required. How will one know that the databases are used or maximized? STATISTICS