The Human Right of Access to Legal Information: Using Technology To Advance

Transparency and the Rule of Law

© Steven D. Jamar
1 Global Jurist Topics no. 2 art. 6, 1-14 (2001)
http://www.bepress.com/gj/topics/vol1/iss2/art6/

A cornerstone of the human rights movement is establishing the rule of law; without the rule
of law, the very meaning of the term “rights” dissipates. A foundational principle of the rule of
law is governmental transparency, i.e., governments operating not secretly, but openly. One
aspect of this transparency is ready access to the law. Having open and public laws that are
relatively easily available is an important aspect of efforts to create or enhance the rule of law.
This article addresses the human right of access to the law and how using technology can
enhance this access.
Creating the rule of law worldwide is a major aim of many disparate groups ranging from
human rights advocates1 to massive multi-national corporations seeking to use law to help
establish business environments to their liking,2 and including governmental aid agencies,3

1
E.g., Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Since 1978, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights has worked to protect and promote
fundamental human rights. . . . Its programs focus on building the legal institutions and structures that
will guarantee human rights in the long term. . . .
The Committee also seeks to influence the US. government to promote the rule of law in both its
foreign and domestic policy, and presses for greater integration of human rights into the work of the
UN and the World Bank. . . .
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, About the Lawyers Committee, http://www.lchr.org/aboutlchr/aboutlchr.htm
(accessed March 8, 2001). See generally, Linda C. Reif, Building Democratic Institutions: The Role of National
Human Rights Institutions in Good Governance and Human Rights Protection, 13 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 1
(2000)(arguing that legal structures related to protecting human rights are an important part of democratization);
Herbert V. Morais, The Globalization of Human Rights and the Role of International Financial Institutions in
Promoting Human Rights, 33 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 71 (2000).
2
See Robert M. Sherwood, Intellectual Property Systems and Investment Stimulation: The Ratings of Systems in
Eighteen Developing Countries, 337 IDEA 261 (1997); Leontine D. Chuang, Student Article, Investing in China’s
Telecommunications Market: Reflections on the Rule of Law and Foreign Investment in China, 20 Nw. J. Int'l L. &
Bus. 509 (2000).
3
The rule of law is one of the four democracy initiatives of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
The other three are elections, civil society, and governance. USAID, Democracy and Governance,
http://www.usaid.gov/democracy/ (accessed March 8, 2001). USAID’s statement of its official purpose is:
U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's foreign policy
interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving the lives of the citizens of the
developing world. Spending less than one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget, USAID works
around the world to achieve these goals.
USAID, This Is USAID, http://www.usaid.gov/about/ (accessed March 8, 2001). See also, Ruth Greenspan Bell,
EPA's International Assistance Efforts: Developing Effective Environmental Institutions and Partners, 24 Envtl. L.
Rep. (Envtl. L. Inst.) 10,593 n. 4 (Oct. 1994).

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1148802

international aid and development agencies,4 and specialized groups like environmental non-
governmental organizations (NGOs).5 USAID describes the rule of law as follows:
The term "rule of law" embodies the basic principles of equal treatment of all people
before the law, fairness, and both constitutional and actual guarantees of basic human
rights. A predictable legal system with fair, transparent, and effective judicial
institutions is essential to the protection of citizens against the arbitrary use of state
authority and lawless acts of both organizations and individuals. In some states with
weak or nascent democratic traditions, existing laws are not equitable or equitably
applied, judicial independence is compromised, individual and minority rights are not
realized, and institutions have not yet developed the capacity to administer existing
laws. Weak legal institutions endanger democratic reform and sustainable
development in developing countries.
Without the rule of law, a state lacks (a) the legal framework necessary for civil
society to flourish; (b) adequate checks on the executive and legislative branches of
government; and (c) necessary legal foundations for free and fair electoral and
political processes. Beyond the democracy and governance sector, the
accomplishment of other USAID goals relies on effective rule of law. For example,
civil and commercial codes that respect private property and contracts are key
ingredients for the development of market-based economies. USAID's efforts to
strengthen legal systems fall under three inter-connected priority areas: supporting
legal reform, improving the administration of justice, and increasing citizens' access
to justice.6
Some scholars have critiqued attempts to impose a western model of the rule of law because
reformers often have failed to adapt the model to local historical and cultural traditions.7

4
See generally, UN sponsored symposium, The Rule of Law in the Global Village – Issues of Sovereignty and
Universality, Press Release L/T/4351 (Dec. 13, 2000); Agenda for Development, ¶¶ 27, 51, 82, U.N. G.A. Res.
A/RES/51/240 (Oct. 15, 1997). For a discussion of structural adjustment policies and critiques of them, see David
P. Fidler, A Kinder, Gentler System of Capitulations?: International Law, Structural Adjustment Polices, and the
Standard of Liberal, Globalized Civilization, 35 Tex. Int'l L.J. 387(2000). See also, Herbert V. Morais, The
Globalization of Human Rights and the Role of International Financial Institutions in Promoting Human Rights, 33
Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 71 (2000); Maxwell O. Chibundu, Globalizing the Rule of Law: Some Thoughts at and on
the Periphery, presented as part of Symposium on Globalization at the Margins: Perspectives on Globalization from
Developing States, 7 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 79 (1999).
5
See Edward D. McCutcheon, Think Globally, (En)Act Locally, Promoting Effective National Environmental
Regulatory Infrastructure in Developing Nations, 31 Cornell Int'l L. J. 395, 407-408 (1998); Alberto SzEkely,
Democracy, Judicial Reform, the Rule of Law, and Environmental Justice in Mexico, 21 Hous. J. Int'l L. 385, 387-88
(1999) (“The lack of environmental justice is part and parcel of the precarious situation of democracy in the country,
the bitter realities of the nonempire, the ineffectiveness of the rule of law, and the extremely poor quality of
administration of justice in the country.”); William L. Andreen, Environmental Law and International Assistance:
The Challenge of Strengthening Environmental Law in the Developing World, 25 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 17, 23-28
(2000); John McCormick, The Role of Environmental NGOs in International Regimes, in The Global Environment:
Institutions, Law, and Policy 52 (Norman J. Vig & Regina S. Axelrod, eds., 1999).
6
USAID, Agency Objectives–Rule of Law, http://www.usaid.gov/democracy/rol.html (accessed March 8, 2001).
7
E.g., Susan Maslen, Japan & the Rule of Law, 16 UCLA Pac. Basin L.J. 281 (1998) (showing how Japan’s
indigenous, historical criminal justice processes and institutions and “administrative guidance” mechanisms differ
from those of many western rule of law advocates); Stanley Lubman, Bird in a Cage: Chinese Law Reform after
Twenty Years, 20 Nw. J. Int'l L. & Bus. 383 (2000)(tracing some of the major reforms and identifying some

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1148802

Nonetheless, even those advocating a more pliable notion of the rule of law do not advocate
abandoning the idea altogether and none of them argue against the particular attribute of the rule
of law on which this article is built, i.e., transparency.8
Transparency refers to a cluster of related ideas, including governmental action in the open,
the availability of information (particularly law), and accuracy and clarity of the information.9
Official action, which includes the content of laws and regulations, the processes of enacting
law, and the processes involved in enforcing the law, is transparent to the extent that the
information relating to those processes or that content is readily available to interested or
affected persons. Mock phrases it more formally:
Transparency is a measure of the degree to which the existence, content, or meaning
of a law, regulation, action, process, or condition is ascertainable or understandable
by a party with reason to be interested in that law, regulation, action, process, or
condition.10
The idea of promoting transparency globally is relatively uncontroversial and constant.
Edward S. Knight highlights this stability as follows:
The market reform efforts that accompanied the apparent resolution of the Latin
American debt crisis and the emergence of "transition economies" in Eastern Europe
appeared somewhat more optimistic and less self-reflective than those we witness
today. Of course, today's policy makers are informed by the intervening traumas of
Mexico, Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, Russia, and now Brazil, which have shown that
transitions and exit strategies are rarely straight-line or one-way. However, amid
changing theories about proper regimes for exchange rates, capital flows and debt
restructuring, one thread remains fairly constant: the rule of law and the importance
of a stable, transparent, and equitably enforced system of norms and rules to the
functioning of local and global markets alike, whatever economic theory they follow.
Thus, the goals of law reform initiatives set up under the auspices of multilateral
development institutions and bilateral agencies over the past decade [were] echoed in
the reports issued last fall [1999] by three working groups formed by Finance
Ministers and Central Bank Governors from twenty-two systemically significant
economies in response to the crisis in Asia. The reports stress transparency,

obstacles to reform, including some Chinese cultural aspects affecting the efficacy of law reform); Molly Lien, Red
Star Trek: Seeking a Role for Constitutional Law in Soviet Disunion, 30 Stan. J. Int’l L. 41 (1994). See also Steven
D. Jamar, A Lawyering Approach to Law and Developmen, 27 N.C. J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. (2001) (critiquing the
Weberian approach to law and development in favor of a lawyering, problem-solving approach).
8
See James C.N. Paul, The United Nations and the Creation of an International Law of Development, in
Symposium: The United Nations: Challenges of Law and Development, 36 Harv. Int'l L.J. 307, 324, n. 101, 327, 328
(1995); William C. Whitford, The Rule of Law, in Special Issue, 2000 Wis. L. Rev. 723, 725, 726, 734 (2000).
9
William Mock, On the Centrality of Information Law: A Rational Choice Discussion of Information Law and
Transparency, 17 John Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 1069, 1078-1081 (1999).
10
Id. at 1082.
 regulation, and the importance of effective, equitably enforced, domestic insolvency
and debtor-creditor regimes.11
The United States is hardly immune from transparency-as-clarity violations; reading any
random section of the nearly opaque (at least to lay citizens) United States tax code suffices for
this point. David Franklin has provided these two additional examples:
Impenetrable statutes and regulations are hard to square with the rule of law, which
presupposes that governing norms will be reasonably transparent to average citizens.
This is more than just an academic concern. Earlier this year [1998], for instance, the
Ninth Circuit held that certain INS documents relating to deportation and document
fraud were so unintelligible that they deprived aliens of due process. Judge Stephen
Reinhardt concluded that "the documents are so bureaucratic and cumbersome and in
some respects so uninformative and in others so misleading that even those aliens
with a reasonable command of the English language would not receive adequate
notice from them."[12]
Now the White House is getting into the act. On June 1, 1998, the Clinton
administration issued an Executive Memorandum announcing that from now on all
government regulations must be written in "plain language."[13] According to the
Memorandum, plain language is characterized by common, everyday words (except
for necessary technical terms), "you" and other pronouns, the active voice, and short
sentences. At a press conference announcing the initiative, Vice President Gore cited
an existing OSHA regulation providing that "ways of exit access and the doors to
exits to which they lead shall be so designed and arranged as to be clearly
recognizable as such."[14] This, he said, is to be replaced by a somewhat simpler
version: "An exit door must be free of signs or decorations that obscure its visibility."
Even so, Gore wondered aloud whether it might not be still better to say, "Don't put
up anything that makes it harder to see the exit door." 15
But my aim is not to engage in the briefly delightful, but quickly unchallenging game of
“find the opacity”;16 nor is it to address the transparency of governmental processes per se.
Instead, my focus is on the aspect of transparency concerned with the availability of the law to
lawmakers, to scholars, to foreign and domestic investors, to development agencies, and most
critically, to citizens.
Having the law available domestically is very valuable to the citizens, businesses, and
lawmakers of the state. Even having the law available merely as a legislative service to the

11
Edward S. Knight, Legal Infrastructure for the New Global Marketplace, in Symposium: Law-Based Nature of the
New International Financial Infrastructure, 34 Int'l Law. 211, 211-212 (2000).
12
Walters v. Reno, 145 F.3d 1032, 1041 (9th Cir. 1998).
13
Pres. William J. Clinton, Plain Language in Government Writing, 63 Fed. Reg. 31885 (June 1, 1998) (executive
memorandum) (available at 1998 WL 301231).
14
29 C.F.R. § 1910.37 (2001). Two and one-half years after the announcement and after the singling out of this
particular convolution, the regulation is still on the books.
15
David Franklin, Void for Vividness, 1 Green Bag 2d 411, 412-413 (1998).
16
Unchallenging because examples are so plentiful that they are easy to find.
national legislature would be immensely valuable in many states because unlike the situation
now, the law would all be gathered in one place and instantly available to staff and legislators.
Making the law available internationally would further increase the value of it. Scholars
studying comparative law would find their work significantly easier to do. Businesses seeking to
invest overseas would be better able to make investment decisions based in part on the content of
the law more easily. At least as importantly, having the law online and available internationally
would allow states to examine and, as appropriate, adopt or adapt or reject legal solutions tried in
other states.
In the United States, published versions of much of the law can be found in relatively nearby
government offices and public libraries, in innumerable commercial publications, and online in
both free versions17 and commercial versions.18 This general openness and availability of access
to the law does not exist in every country.19 William L. Andreen illustrates some aspects of the
transparency problem in the context of environmental regulation:
Consultants retained by a donor and commissioned by a government body to review
environmental and natural resource legislation with a view to participating in the
drafting of some new legislation are entering a virtual mine field. Not only is the
legal and cultural terrain complex, but the institutional dynamics can be treacherous.
Simply collecting the necessary information can be a tremendous challenge since
legal treatises, government organization manuals, and compilations of relevant law
seldom exist or if they do, their existence is either unknown to the consultant or, if
known, almost impossible to find. All too often, consultants will lack the time, the
ability, or perhaps even the desire to accurately assess the overlapping legal and
institutional responsibilities existing within the government. [footnote omitted] Thus,
either advertently or inadvertently, many proposed reforms will favor one or another
institution, ministry or donor–a fact that will not only doom the entire exercise to
likely failure, but will produce even more cause for institutional distrust. [footnote
omitted] Donors and governments alike, moreover, may eventually grow weary of
even trying to craft appropriate laws and institutional structures.
For these reasons, successful law reform projects are not terribly common. Reports
and proposals are written by a seemingly endless chain of consultants who often work
in isolation, producing work lacking continuity and destined to gather dust.20
These same attributes apply as much to the non-environmental law in many countries as they
do in the area of environmental law. Correcting this problem is part of what transparency is all
about. In some countries laws are the province of only those who are “in-the-know” with others

17
E.g., Library of Congress, Thomas, http://thomas.loc.gov/ (accessed March 20, 2001) (Library of Congress’
publication of federal legislative materials. See Library of Congress, About Thomas,
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html#back (last updated Jan. 3, 2001) for background information.); Cornell
Law School, Legal Information Institute, http://www.law.cornell.edu/ (accessed March 20, 2001).
18
E.g., Thompson Publishing, Westlaw, http://web2.westlaw.com/ (accessed March 20, 2001).
19
Henry H. Perritt, Jr., Information Access Rights based on International Human Rights Law, 45 Buff. L. Rev. 899
at text accompanying nn. 6-9 (1997).
20
William L. Andreen, Environmental Law and International Assistance: The Challenge of Strengthening
Environmental Law in the Developing World, 25 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 17, 23-28 (2000).
left out. This can lead to arbitrary and capricious enforcement of what are in essence secret laws,
lack of confidence in the legitimacy of the legal system, and lack of conformity of behavior by
people to the laws. As stated by Perritt, “legitimacy of public institutions increases when the
public knows what the institutions are doing. Compliance with the law increases when the law is
available.”21
There are many obstacles to solving the access-to-law transparency problem. These
obstacles include cultural and historical traditions relating to non-access to law and to
governments operating in secrecy, lack of economic resources, insufficiently large numbers of
people with sufficient expertise (lack of know-how), and sometimes an under-appreciation of the
value of transparency. Among numerous such examples, a clear tie between history and a
reticence toward full transparency is seen in Eastern Europe. According to Perritt, the
“reluctance of some [Eastern European] governments stems from the communist era in which
public access to information about government activities either was unnecessary or was actively
opposed.”22
However, the situation is far from hopeless. The increasing (albeit uneven) recognition of
human rights worldwide coupled with new technologies, more openness by many governments,
and efforts by NGOs portend a more transparent future.
Ready access to the law is a human right. Although no treaty states the right exactly this
way, the right exists both from core international human rights documents and at least arguably
from the recently adopted custom of an increasing number of nations.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) provides:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.23
This right explicitly includes the rights “to seek [and] receive information.” The laws of a state
are a kind of information.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also provides a right of access to
information. It essentially repeats and then expands upon the provisions of Article 19 of the
UDHR.
1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include
freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of
frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other
media of his choice.
3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries
with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain
restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:

21
Perritt, supra n. 20 at 899.
22
Perritt supra n. 20, at text accompanying n 8.
23
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, U.N. G.A. Res. 217, Art. 19 (Dec. 10, 1948).
 (a) For the respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or
of public health or morals.24
Once again the right to “seek [and] receive . . . information . . . of all kinds” is explicitly stated.
The limits set in paragraph three would not apply to limit access to laws. The law itself cannot
be kept secret to protect national security, or at least not most laws. Furthermore, these
exceptions are explicitly made narrow and any limits must not merely be convenient to those in
power, but necessary.
The right of access to law is also implicit in other provisions of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights. For example, the provisions regarding criminal procedure imply that
the laws are public. The right “not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention”25 carries
with it the right to the grounds for arrest and the procedures for arrest being “established by
law.”26 It is a very short step to the inference that those laws should be open and publicly known
and available. Other rights such as equality before tribunals27 can only be effectively monitored
and insured if the laws under which people are charged are public. Furthermore, within each
state the law is specifically required to protect everyone against “arbitrary and unlawful
interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.”28 The best protection of such
rights is a combination of sound law and public awareness of the law.
Provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights29 also
support the right to public access to the law. In order to realize nondiscrimination in
employment, rights to unionize, rights to social security, and the like, the laws need to be public
and open and available for inspection by citizens. Laws should be neither secret nor difficult to
obtain nor available to just an elite, privileged few.
Regional treaties contain similar provisions30 and many states’ laws explicitly make the law
publicly available.31 As noted by Perritt, in Sweden the right of access to official documents is
stated in the Swedish constitution.32 In the United States and in its constituent states, openness
of the law and availability to it are a matter of custom as well as of positive law such as the
federal Freedom of Information Act33 and analogous state versions of it.34

24
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Art. 19, 999 U.N.T.S. 171(opened for signature December
16, 1966; entered into force March 23, 1976).
25
Id. at art. 9.
26
Id.
27
Id. art. 14.
28
Id. art. 17.
29
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 993 U.N.T.S. 3 (opened for signature Dec. 16,
1966; entered into force January 3, 1976).
30
E.g., European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Art. 10, 213
U.N.T.S. 222 (opened for signature Nov. 4, 1950; entered into force Sept. 3, 1953; amended in 1970, 1971, 1990,
1998).
31
See Perritt, supra n. 20 at text accompanying nn. 52-79 (reviewing the informational rights of Russia, Slovakia
and Hungary.).
32
Id. at n. 13 citing Swed. Const. (The Instrument of Government, 1989), ch. 2, art. 1 (2) (guaranteeing freedom of
information), and Swed. Const. (Freedom of the Press Act), ch. 2, art. 2 (guaranteeing access to official documents).
33
5 U.S.C. § 552 (1994 & Supp. 1996).
 States seeking to improve transparency and the rule of law and to give effect to the right to
access to the law do not need to act without help. For example, USAID's efforts to strengthen
legal systems around the world fall under three inter-connected priority areas: supporting legal
reform, improving the administration of justice, and increasing citizens' access to justice.35 It is
this last aspect that the Law Library of Congress is helping to address through its Global Legal
Information Network36 and through its collection of links to the laws of various nations online.37
Many constitutions and some laws of various nations are available online now.38 However,
in some instances, particularly for the developing world, the online sites are hosted not by the
governments of the states themselves, but rather by other institutions such as a university, often
in the United States. In addition, laws other than constitutions, including legislation,
administrative regulations, and executive orders, are much less available than are constitutions.
Much remains to be done.
With the maturing of several technologies, open and wide access to the law of any state can
be created quite quickly provided the will, know-how, and money can be found.39 These
technologies include in particular the world wide web, relatively inexpensive computers and disk
storage space, powerful database management software, and various display, structuring and
print software (including HTML, PDF, and XML), and the development of rapid, inexpensive
broadband telecommunications.
Because of the nature of the internet and telecommunications, law online can be made
available internationally as easily as domestically. Fiber optic cables, increasing availability and
sophistication of satellite communications technology, and continuing efforts to build
communications infrastructure around the world all make the use of internet technologies to
distribute law more feasible.40
The world wide web is based on a set of computer protocols (rules to which programs must
comply to work) and implementing software which allows users to navigate from one network

34
E.g., Minn. Stat. §§ 13.03, 13.99 (1997). See Henry Perritt, Jr., Sources of Rights to Access Public Information, 4
Wm. & Mary Bill of Rts. J. 179 (1995) (U.S. law).
35
USAID, USAID: Agency Objectives–Rule of Law, http://www.usaid.gov/democracy/ rol.html (last updated Sept.
21, 2000).
36
Law Library of Congress, Global Legal Information Network, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/law/GLINv1/ GLIN.html
(accessed Mar. 16, 2001).
37
Law Library of Congress, Guide to Law Online, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/glin/ (accessed Mar. 16, 2001).
38
E.g., Law Library of Congress, Guide to Law Online: Nations of the World, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/glin/x-
nation.html (accessed Mar. 16, 2001) (linking to online sources of laws for many nations including among others
Angola, Angola, Constitution, http://www.angola.org/referenc/constitution/constit.htm (accessed March 20, 2001));
Brazil (Georgetown University & Organization of the American States, Constitution,
http://www.georgetown.edu/pdba/Constitutions/ Brazil/brazil.html (accessed March 20, 2001); Brazil Senate,
Constitution, http://www.senado.gov.br/bdtextual/const88/const88.htm (accessed March 20, 2001)); China
(Wuertzberg University, Constitution, http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/law/ch__indx.html (accessed March 20, 2001));
Finland (University of Richmond, Constitution, http://www.urich.edu/~jpjones/confinder/Finland.htm (accessed
March 20, 2001)); Ireland (Ireland, Constitution, http://www.irlgov.ie/
taoiseach/publication/constitution/english/contents.htm (accessed March 20, 2001)).
39
Perritt, supra n. 20 at . See also, Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Internet as a Threat to Sovereignty?: Thoughts on the
Internet's Role in Strengthening National and Global Governance, 5 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 423, 435-36 (1998).
40
See, e.g., Alec Klein, AOL to Open Netscape Office In India's Tech Center: Internet Company Plans to Invest
$100 Million Over Five Years, Wash. Post E05 (March 6, 2001).
computer to another through a graphical user interface. The underlying programs and protocols
(TCP/IP and http, among others) are invisible to the user. Through a system of uniform resource
locations (urls – essentially internet addresses) and links, the user can “travel” to remote sites all
around the world in a matter of seconds in many cases.
The programming language for creating webpages and websites, html, is relatively easy to
learn. In fact, there are many authoring programs which allow users to create webpages without
knowing html; the programs are much like using a word processor. In fact, major word
processing programs like WordPerfect and Microsoft Word allow the author to save files in html
format. Because most laws are mostly text, and because the authoring programs are quite
straightforward to learn and use, creating html versions of laws and regulations and tribunal
decisions is not a difficult task today. If an html version of the law is created, and if that html
file is copied to a computer that is connected to the internet as a server, the law can be provided
for everyone in the world to read. However, simple flat text files or flat html files do not take
advantage of the power of the medium. At a minimum links and searching capabilities need to
be added. As discussed below, by using more advanced technology like xml, even more power
can be encoded into legal documents.
One concern of some people regarding html versions of laws is that they do not look like the
hard copy versions, which are still considered the official versions of the law. The relatively
limited capabilities of html generally do not allow the capture of text pages that look like and are
paginated like the print versions.41 One alternative to straight html files is to use the Open Book
software. OpenBook essentially embeds gif images of each printed page within an html shell
and adds a series of links between the pages and an html table of contents. This sleight of hand
creates an online version which retains the appearance of and pagination of the hard copy of the
book.42
Another approach is to use Adobe Acrobat software to create pdf (portable document format)
files. As described by Adobe:
Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF) is the open de facto standard for
electronic document distribution worldwide. Adobe PDF is a universal file format

41
But see Nat’l Academy Press, LC21: (2001), Table of Contents, http://www.nap.edu/books/0309071445/html/
(accessed Mar. 16, 2001) (an example of reproducing hard-copy pagination online). The book at this site is
Committee on an Information Technology Strategy for the Library of Congress, Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board, Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications, and National
Research Council, LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress (Nat’l Academy Press 2000) (hereinafter
“A Digital Strategy”). An html version is viewable at National Academy Press, LC21: A Digital Strategy for the
Library of Congress, http://books.nap.edu/html/lc21/ (accessed Mar. 21, 2001).
42
National Academy Press, About the NAP Mission and Open Book Interface, http://www.nap.edu/info/site.html
(accessed Mar. 16, 2001). NAP describes Open Book as follows:
The Open Book page image presentation framework is not designed to replace printed books, nor
emulate HTML. Rather, it is a free, browsable, nonproprietary, fully and deeply searchable version of
the publication which we can inexpensively and quickly produce to make the material available
worldwide. For most effective printing, use the "print" button available via the OpenBook tool block,
above. The 300 x 150 dpi PDF linked to it is printable on your local printer.
National Academy Press, LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress,
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309071445/html/R1.html#pagetop (accessed Mar. 20, 2001). However, since the
“pages” are image files, the text cannot be captured or copied electronically as text in a straightforward, reliable,
accurate manner.
 that preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics of any source
document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. Adobe PDF
files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed exactly as
intended by anyone with a free Adobe Acrobat® Reader™. You can convert any
document to Adobe PDF using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software.43
An advantage of pdf is that it can capture documents for display and printing exactly as they
are laid out in hard copy. Unlike image files (like OpenBook’s gif pages), in pdf the text can be
searched and linked indexes can be created. PDF files also have another advantage: they can be
made relatively secure from tampering compared to certain other formats. This can help insure
the accuracy of the law as provided online. One significant downside of PDF files is tying one
file to another. PDF linking and searching tools are not quite as powerful as one would desire
for legal resources. PDF files tend to be large and require greater storage and print resources by
users than do some other files. They also take longer to download because of size. Another
problem is deciding just what constitutes the document. Is it to be the whole title of the code, or
a part, or chapter, or article, or section? The choice affects the size of the document, the ability
to download, and the ability to search among the various sections or other parts of the statute or
regulation.
A relatively new technology, xml,44 will make online legal resources even more valuable
than the current flat html files or than pdf files heretofore available online (although the pdf
technology is being converted to be xml compliant). “XML” stands for eXtensible Markup
Language. In essence, xml allows documents to be tagged with information about the document
which will allow the document which is readable in an internet browser like Netscape 6.0 or
higher or Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher to be handled by computers with far greater flexibility
and power than ever before.
Not incidentally, xml uses Unicode,45 a character set which “provides a unique number [for
the computer to use] for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the
program, no matter what the language.”46 Unlike ASCII or other smaller text-coding sets of
numbers, Unicode allows computers and programs to read and understand text in all languages
and scripts including not only those using the Roman alphabet, but also those using Cyrillic,
Greek, Arabic, Devanagari, and East Asian character sets (e.g., Mandarin, Korean, and
Japanese). Using Unicode and xml would allow laws to be published in their original language
in their original script while at the same time allowing those laws to be tagged with information
about what the law is about (e.g., freedom of access to information). Regardless of the language
in which the laws are published, the xml tags could be in the most prevalent language used in
computer programming, English. Thus a researcher who knows no foreign language could find
laws in all languages which relate to a particular key concept. Then an interpreter could be
found as needed.

43
Adobe, Adobe Acrobat 5, http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/ adobepdf.html (accessed Mar. 16, 2001).
44
Jon Bosak and Tim Bray, XML and the Second-Generation Web, Scientific American (May 1999) (also available
at http://www.sciam.com/1999/0599issue/ 0599bosak.html).
45
Unicode Consortium, Unicode Home Page, http://www.unicode.org/ (accessed March 18, 2001).
46
Unicode Consortium, What Is Unicode, http://www.unicode.org/unicode/ standard/WhatIsUnicode.html (accessed
March 18, 2001).
 The tagging can include not only html information relating to style and display features (like
italics, color, lists, and tables), but also information about the structure of the document itself and
information about what is contained within the document. Using xml parts of the document can
be identified as headings, definitions, citation, topics, and much, much more. In short, meaning
can be delivered along with form.47 This in turn allows researchers to search for information
based on meaningful key words, not just text strings.
For example, if the UDHR were tagged with meaningful information, and one of the tags was
“human rights,” then an automated search would find all documents in a particular database or
xml-tagged set of documents with that topic tag. Not only could one find the UDHR, but, if the
UDHR were tagged internally with more precision, and if one of the tags was “free speech”48,
one could find Article 19 by searching for that concept even though the word “speech” does not
appear in Article 19 at all.
If the XML markup (loosely, “tagging”) is done properly and consistently, then generalized
searches of multiple databases and xml-coded documents available through the web could be
done across the entire world.49 Someone wanting to find all of the religious freedom laws could
send an xml-compliant search and receive back a list with links to all such laws from every
country. A state’s law-publishing credo should be “Tag once, use often,” where “use” refers to
searching, publishing in various media, revising, and so on.50 Adoption of a uniform set of tags
for marking up law would have immediate and long-term benefits.51
This world-wide accessibility of national and international law is being advanced by the
Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) project of the Law Library of Congress (LLOC) as a
not-incidental by-product of performing its primary responsibility of serving “as the foreign,
comparative, and international law research arm of the U.S. Congress, the Judiciary, and
Executive Agencies.”52 In order to perform its primary mission of serving its U.S. governmental

47
See generally, Winchel “Todd” Vincent, III, Legal XML and Standards for the Legal Industry, 53 S.M.U. L. Rev.
1395 (2000); Edward L. Rubin, Computer Languages as Networks and Power Structures: Governing the
Development of XML, 53 S.M.U. L. Rev. 1447 (2000). Interestingly, although XML is merely 3years old, as of
March 20, 2001, there were already 59 articles in the Westlaw’s JLR (law journals) database which included the
term “xml.”
48
The tag itself would be invisible to the reader, but the code would look something like this <FreeSpeech> Article
19 </FreeSpeech>. The reader would see only “Article 19,” but the document could be searched by computer for
the <FreeSpeech> tag.
49
I have been involved in creating the XML document type definition (DTD) for the GLIN database. If one or as
series of consistent, related DTDs are adopted for encoding legal documents, then the significant potential of xml
and online legal resources can be released. The lead author of our DTD is Prof. Konstantinos Kalpakis of the
University of Maryland at Baltimore County. Our annotated DTD has been published as an Unofficial Note with the
Legal XML group.
50
Vendors, such as Thompson Publishing (Westlaw), would add value by adding richer tags, but the basic laws
would be more accessible as a public service to general users.
51
Thompson Publishing uses xml for its Westlaw database. The LegalXML organization hosted a conference on
Congressional Organizations' Application of XML aimed at working with stakeholders in the legislative branch who
have a hand in handling legal documents including the “Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service and
the Law Library (GLIN), the Clerk of the House, the Government Printing Office, Office of Legislative Counsel, the
Senate, and the House Information Resources.” LegalXML, COAX Conference Announcement (March 20, 2001).
52
Services of the Law Library of Congress, brochure dated December 1996, quoted in A Digital Strategy, supra n.
42 at 67.
clients, the LLOC needs a library of foreign and international law. Obtaining current copies of
foreign law has never been easy and is expensive.
Dr. Rubens Medina, Law Librarian of Congress, saw an opportunity and conceived of the
idea of putting foreign law online. In the past eight years, GLIN has moved from being a
concept to being a functioning part of the Law Library of Congress. The LLOC describes GLIN
as follows:
The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) maintains and provides a database of
laws, regulations, and other complementary legal sources. The documents included
in the database are contributed by the governments of the member nations from the
original official texts which are deposited, by agreement of the members, in a server
initially at the Library of Congress of the United States of America. The basic
elements of this database are: (1) full texts of the documents in the official language
of the country of origin; (2) summaries or abstracts in English; and (3) thesauri in
English and in as many official languages as are represented in the database. The
summaries or abstracts are linked electronically to the corresponding full texts.
Currently, information can be searched in English using the instructions appearing on
the screen. GLIN is interested in enlisting new partners for the network, and all
governments or their designated agencies are invited to participate.53
GLIN is working primarily with developing countries which are being supported in part by
the World Bank.54 Consequently, most of the GLIN participants are developing countries.55
Wealthier countries can more easily afford to develop their own online resources which should
be made available to the general public. Although all of the GLIN materials are available to all
GLIN members inter se, only limited parts of the GLIN databases are available to non-member
guest visitors. Thus GLIN as currently operated serves a limited number of stakeholders
interested in comparative law and in access to the law. Furthermore, it is up to each country to
determine the extent to which its portion of the GLIN database is available to its citizens. At
present GLIN is generally available only to the members and only to limited authorized users
within each state which typically means the GLIN team plus legislative and executive support
offices.
GLIN is in its early stages of development and suffers from certain typical beta-version
limitations including an unwieldy interface, unduly complex and limited search procedures using
thesauri, uneven database content, sometimes cryptic summaries of laws, and the like. Some,
indeed most of these difficulties are caused in large part by the substantial underfunding of the
endeavor.56 Others are related to the disjunction between the vision and the technological limits
of handling data, particularly data in many languages.57

53
Law Library of Congress, Welcome to the Global Legal Information Network, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/
law/GLINv1/GLIN.html (accessed March 20, 2001).
54
A Digital Strategy, supra n. 42 at 68.
55
For example, some of the 17 GLIN member states (as of September 2000) are Brazil, Korea, Kuwait, Lithuania,
Mauritania, Romania, Uruguay, and Tunisia.
56
A Digital Strategy, supra n. 42 at 68.
57
Id.
 Nonetheless, GLIN is in the process of moving from its infancy into adolescence. A
significant software upgrade is planned under which GLIN will begin to convert data to being
xml-compliant. This will substantially improve the ability to handle metadata and to search the
underlying databases.58 Problems remain with respect to limitations on input and tagging tools
and with the user interface, but ongoing developments should result in improvements in both of
these areas.
As the technology matures, and if additional funds begin to flow to GLIN or similar projects
worldwide, the technological limitations of making law available, accessible, and searchable
online should be reduced. To be truly compliant with the human right of access to the law and
for law to be fully transparent many states that still regard their laws not only as proprietary, but
also as to some degree secret, must undergo a substantial and perhaps difficult mind-shift. States
must make their laws openly and freely available and should use all reasonable technological
means to do so. This includes using xml encoding and online publication of the law. Access to
their nation’s law is a citizen’s human right. This access should be provided not only in
hardcopies distributed widely, but also online.
Access to the law is one area where technology can improve human rights.59 GLIN is a very
good start. Though neither its genesis nor its primary functions are to serve human rights, it does
help advance human rights through making laws accessible. GLIN, together with similar
endeavors by others, has great potential to transform opacity into transparency, to make real the
human right of access to law.

Steven D. Jamar is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Legal Reasoning, Research, and Writing Program
at Howard University School of Law. The author wishes to thank Dean Alice Gresham Bullock and Howard
University School of Law for supporting my work on this article through granting me a sabbatical leave. The author
especially wishes to thank Dr. Rubens Medina, Law Librarian of Congress, for his support in granting me a
Research Fellowship at the Law Library of Congress for the 2000-2001 academic year, Dr. Janice Hyde, Director of
the Global Legal Information Network project of the Law Library of Congress for her valuable contributions with
respect to those aspects of this article, and Dr. Konstantinos Kalpakis for his patient work with me regarding my
learning XML.

58
See generally, id. at 133-140.
59
For a general discussion of technology and human rights see The Impact of Technology on Human Rights: Global
Case Studies (C.G. Weeramantry, ed., U.N. University Press 1993).