Philip Leith

“Communication and Dialogue: What Government Websites might tell us about Citizenship and Governance”

There are many ways to map and measure the links and spaces between the citizen and government. With the new models of governance available—where the government directs and the private sector along with a range of other actors implements—there are a whole number of questions that can be both examined in a qualitative manner but also may be examined in a quantitative manner. This paper looks at one quantitative approach (WAES—Website Attribute Evaluation System) and posit that it may be possible to develop from this further techniques—the development of e‐metrics—which will aid qualitative study of the citizenship and governance in the world of e‐government (E‐Gov).

The Judge and the Computer: How Best 'Decision Support'?

One of the important lessons learned from the early expert consultants is that excellent decision-making performance does not guarantee user acceptance. (1981)1 Version 2.1 is the final release of ASSYST. During the past several years, the Sentencing Commission has informally surveyed probation officers at training sessions to determine the usefulness of the ASSYST guideline application software. On the whole we have found that the ASSYST program is not frequently used. After balancing the program’s usefulness with the resources required to keep it updated, we have decided to discontinue maintaining ASSYST. (1996)2

Legal Expert Systems

Expert systems — computer programs which are said to have the capacity to “reason” and to “think” like real experts — are an attractive development from the idea of knowledge representation dealt with in the previous chapter. For, if it is possible to actually represent knowledge within a computer, then surely it should be possible to use this knowledge so that it replicates the expertise of an expert? This, in its essence is what the idea of expert systems is all about: replication of expertise and advice-giving by means of computer.

Developing European Legal Information Markets based on Government Information

This article examines the Directive on re-use of public sector information in light of an EU funded project under the eContent programme (ADD-WIJZER). In outline, the Directive will allow commercial (and other) information providers low cost access to government copyrighted works. Copyright will remain with the relevant government but it will not normally be able to prevent re-use of this material through exclusive licences etc. The aim of the Directive is to increase the production of information products and thus help develop the information marketplace in Europe. Such a legal information marketplace would be expected to have a customer base wider than that of the legal profession. The research in this article represents a series of interviews with a representative sample of those who might be expected to be part of a growing `legal information marketplace` and what might be the `added value` which commercial suppliers of legal information might provide to attract them to these envisaged products. 3 4 5 Importantly, we start from the position that in order to compete successfully in the marketplace it will be necessary for information providers to understand how the legal market place utilises legal information at present and what users perceive as being of potential `added value`. We will briefly use the conceptual structure of the `technology acceptance model` to analyse our interview material. 6 We will also note that a tension exists between the private and public sector over the dissemination of public sector information and that the Directive needed to resolve several issues if the eContent programme of the information society is to succeed. Such issues include: access rights, copyright, competition rules and pricing policies. These have not been attacked in the Directive and we thus feel that it - in comparison to the Proposal for a Directive - offers little to either the public or to commercial re-users of information that is not already on offer at present. The Directive is, perhaps, a failed project in terms of the ultimate aims of the Information Society.

Enabling Free On-line Access to UK Law Reports: The Copyright Problem

The history of publishing legal decisions (law reporting) in the UK has been that of a privatised system since its inception, and that history has encompassed several hundred years. The privatised nature of this has meant that the product (the law report) has been, except in limited cases, viewed as the property of the publisher, rather than the property of the court or public. BAILII is an open access legal database that came about in part because of the copyrighted, privatised nature of this legal information. In this paper, we will outline the problem of access to pre-2000 judgments in the UK and consider whether there are legal or other remedies which might enable BAILII to both develop a richer historic database and also to work in harmony, rather than in competition, with legal publishers. We argue that public access to case law is an essential requirement in a democratic common law system, and that BAILII should be seen as a potential step towards a National Law Library.

The application of AI to law

There is much interest in moving AI out into real world applications, a move which has been encouraged by recent funding which has attempted to show industry and commerce can benefit from the Fifth Generation of computing. In this article I suggest that the legal application area is one which is very much more complex than it might — at first sight — seem. I use arguments from the sociology of law to indicate that the viewing of the legal system as simply a rule-bound discipline is inherently nave. This, while not new in jurisprudence, is — as the literature of AI and law indicates — certainly novel to the field of artificial intelligence. The socio-legal argument provided is set within the context of AI as one more example of the failure of scientific success and method to easily transmit itself over into the social sciences.

E-participation and e-participants: solving the patent ‘crisis’

One of the major planks of some visions for E-Gov is that there is a willing participatory group who are more than happy to be involved in new forms of democracy and will be active and useful suppliers of input to e-consultation or e-participation processes. This group is different from that which goes online to the government website and signs a petition asking the prime minister to resign. It is becoming clear, though, that the commitment to e-participation may well be there in theory, but difficult to access in practice. Further, the participation that is most welcome can frequently require training and expertise that is not widely available or there may be differences in opinion as to the point of participation. In this paper I will look to the attempts to encourage participation in the patent system. The UK has initiated a trial system utilising New York Law Schools Peer-To-Patent project, but has also attempted to involve participants in previous consultation exercises. I will use these as demonstrations of the sorts of problems that e-participation has met, and consider whether this new form of E-Gov is perhaps being oversold. The interesting question is whether participation is a growing tool that can ensure better public services from the State. My conclusion is that consultation and participatory projects can demonstrate involvement and are certainly educative, but e-participatory projects are most likely incapable of achieving the goals set by their more optimistic advocates. The paper emphasises the patents field, but the lessons from it can – I suggest – be viewed as indicators having wider governance relevance. The primary point being made is that the technocratic view is always over-optimistic.

Europe’s Information Society project and digital inclusion: universal service obligations or social solidarity?

The importance of digital inclusion to Europe is obvious: as we move towards an ever more internet-communicating society the lack of access to basic digital infrastructures for a significant segment of the population is both problematic for those individuals without access and also problematic for those providing services which should be efficient and fully utilised. The EU’s ‘Information Society’ project has been the central plank of the European attempt to build a European digital marketplace, a concept which necessitates digital inclusion of the population at large. It is a project which prefers universal service obligations to achieve inclusion. If that is to be the preferred solution I suggest that we must consider exclusion from the banking system, given that the Information Society is at root an economic community. However, universal service obligations are not the only method whereby digital inclusion can be encouraged and I posit we may need to reconsider the role of the state as supplier of services through the concept of ‘social solidarity’.

The rise and fall of the legal expert system

Those very few of us who were critical of the rise of legal expert systems in the early 1980s probably wonder, in idle moments, whether there is a possibility of rejuvenation of an approach which was once multi-various and is now obscure and esoteric. Is it possible that after rising and falling, that legal expert system research programme could rise again? What were the conditions which gave impetus to the field and could they be repeated? In this article I want to return, with a personal viewpoint, on the rise of expert systems and why - despite their failure - the appeal of commoditising legal expertise continues to allure the unwary.

Assessing Bailii in 2012

Cynthia Fellows, Philip Leith and Joe Ury report on the survey responses to a usage and attitudinal project carried out in early 2012 by the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII). There were 3,274 survey participants and their responses demonstrate substantial support for BAILII as an open access mechanism, a technically competent dissemination tool and a useful resource for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Such positive response, we suggest, indicates that BAILIIs resources are now threaded through the fabric of UK digital legal information, strengthening the ability of all citizens to access and become better informed about the laws of the land.