Database of the law

Tony Raven said:

I see there is now a website with all the primary UK legislation
on it provided by the Department of Constitutional Affairs. So
now if you want to know what Section 72 of the Highway Act
1835 says you can look it up:
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/Home.aspx

Cheers for that! Extremely helpful to get this link. It will save me
much time burrowing and transcribing in the library.

With a couple of very minor whinges, I think the site is
well-designed, easy to use and fast in delivering results. Government
database projects CAN be successful!

Now all we need is a Government database of case law to go with the
statute law one. Currently case law is only online from commercial
sources - fine if one belongs to an organisation which subscribes, not
so good if one is Joe Public.

Oh, and a database of LOCAL legislation could be helpful too.

Note that Tony says the site provides "all primary UK legislation". It
also provides all secondary stuff too. Genuinely comprehensive.

--
Tim Forcer [email hidden]
The University of Southampton, UK

The University is not responsible for my opinions

Tim Forcer said:

Now all we need is a Government database of case law to go with the
statute law one.

That's been coming Real Soon Now for the last twenty years.

Quoted message said:

Currently case law is only online from commercial
sources - fine if one belongs to an organisation which subscribes, not
so good if one is Joe Public.

Or from http://www.bailii.org/ - free, no registration, no
advertisements. Mostly only back to the mid-1990s at the moment, but
some of the most important older cases are there too.

ObDeclarationOfInterest: I work for them.

Roger

Tony Raven said:

I see there is now a website with all the primary UK legislation on it
provided by the Department of Constitutional Affairs. So now if you
want to know what Section 72 of the Highway Act 1835 says you can look
it up:
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/Home.aspx

http://www.opsi.gov.uk is also very useful. It has all acts from 1988
(with minor exceptions), and new legislation appears there almost
immediately. I gave up trying to use OPSI's own search function,
though, and use Google instead.

For example:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cyclist&as_sitesearch=opsi.gov.uk

Tony Raven said:

http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/Home.aspx

Nice idea. Just-OK implementation. Too many 'opens in new window'
links and the 'Accessibility' page says it's HTML 4.01 Transition -
not even year-2000's xhtml yet.

Apart from window-popping, how many more of the top 10 are there?
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

I hope the statutelaw site gets linked into bailii.org soon.
--
MJR/slef

Roger Burton West said:

Tim Forcer said:

Now all we need is a Government database of case law to go with the
statute law one.

That's been coming Real Soon Now for the last twenty years.

Quoted message said:

Currently case law is only online from commercial
sources - fine if one belongs to an organisation which subscribes, not
so good if one is Joe Public.

Or from http://www.bailii.org/ - free, no registration, no
advertisements. Mostly only back to the mid-1990s at the moment, but
some of the most important older cases are there too.

Again, I much appreciate being directed to this site. Thanks.

Quoted message said:

ObDeclarationOfInterest: I work for them.

I think you're entitled to be pleased about this! Is there an
intention to hyperlink the judgements, so that one can simply click on
cited cases within the presented report?

--
Tim Forcer [email hidden]
The University of Southampton, UK

The University is not responsible for my opinions

Tony Raven said:

I see there is now a website with all the primary UK legislation on it
provided by the Department of Constitutional Affairs. So now if you
want to know what Section 72 of the Highway Act 1835 says you can look
it up:
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/Home.aspx

This is only tenuously related but the Highway Code site is on the list of 551
government sites to be shut down. One hopes the content will
be preserved elsewhere.

Regards,

-david

In article <[email hidden]>, David
Nutter
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven said:

I see there is now a website with all the primary UK legislation on it
provided by the Department of Constitutional Affairs. So now if you
want to know what Section 72 of the Highway Act 1835 says you can look
it up:
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/Home.aspx

This is only tenuously related but the Highway Code site is on the list of 551
government sites to be shut down. One hopes the content will
be preserved elsewhere.

That's a very low-maintenance site - I imagine the content will just be
stuck in an appropriate sub-category of an umbrella site rather than
being accessed by an easy-to-remember domain name.
Is metoffice.gov.uk going the same way?

Tim Forcer said:

I think you're entitled to be pleased about this! Is there an
intention to hyperlink the judgements, so that one can simply click on
cited cases within the presented report?

Wherever a judgement is on BAILII and is cited in something else that's
on BAILII, it ought to get hyperlinked automatically. If it isn't,
generally that's because either we don't have it or the citation style
is a weird one that we don't know about.

This is getting rather OT but I'll be happy to talk about it further by
email. ObCycling: when I go in to the office I do so by bicycle. :-)

R

in message <[email hidden]>, Roger Burton

West (') said:

Tim Forcer said:

I think you're entitled to be pleased about this! Is there an
intention to hyperlink the judgements, so that one can simply click on
cited cases within the presented report?

Wherever a judgement is on BAILII and is cited in something else that's
on BAILII, it ought to get hyperlinked automatically. If it isn't,
generally that's because either we don't have it or the citation style
is a weird one that we don't know about.

Just another 'congratulations'. That's an extremely useful service and I
have bookmarked it.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
; ... of course nothing said here will be taken notice of by
; the W3C. The official place to be ignored is on www-style or
; www-html. -- George Lund