As the law moves inexorably to a digital publication model in which books no longer play a role, the problem of how to continue to make the law available to all becomes more acute. Open access initiatives already exist, and more are on the way, but all are limited by their inability to provide more than self-indexed search options for their users. Self-indexing, although a powerful alternative to the traditional pre-indexed searching made possible by systems like West's “Key Number” digests, has inherent limitations which make it a poor choice as the sole means of researching the law. But developing a new pre-indexed legal digest would be a prohibitively expensive and complex undertaking, making it unlikely that open access legal information sites can develop and maintain a fully-implemented digesting approach to legal research. This article proposes a reconceptualization of the information already contained within most American judicial opinions in order to permit open access sites to offer a form of pre-indexed research to their users. By mapping a case's location in a graphical representation of the doctrinal development of an issue under consideration, this approach allows the court's citations to prior authority to act as a pre-indexing tool, allows the researcher to update the law by showing more recent cases that have cited to the target case, and gives the researcher the opportunity to trace network links in order to uncover connections between cases that might otherwise have been difficult to discern.

This outline is prepared based on the 1995 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (“The 1995 Constitution”). It is important to acknowledge at the outset that the 1995 Constitution cannot be studied in isolation. Like its forerunners, it is not distinctively Ethiopian, save for the customary and religious laws that it recognized. Ethiopian constitutions, both past and present, have been derived, in part, from foreign constitutions including constitutions from western and eastern countries, including Japan. Although its immediate sources can be traced back to the Charter of the Transitional Government of 1991, this 1995 Constitution was built upon the constitutions that preceded it, the laws that have been promulgated since the 1930s, and the religious and customary laws that predated it.

The international law of human rights is a set of standards that each day increases the sphere of protection of our rights. But, how does one build a space of this nature? The response includes various actors: families and victims reporting and crying for justice, Human rights defenders, legal practitioners, government officials, international civil servants, academics, independent experts, among others.

Over the past few decades, a new process has dominated how States treat foreign investment and the consequences to States for breaching international standards. The system's key feature, the means for settling a foreign investor's dispute with a State that hosts the investment, lacks traditional elements of State judicial systems. Instead, it is a creature of State consent as reflected in international investment agreements (IIAs). In IIAs, States promise to treat foreign investment and the investors in a certain, fundamentally fair, way. Many IIAs authorize foreign investors and States to select private arbitrators to resolve claims that host States breached their promises under the IIA. The arbitrators, in turn, are empowered to issue arbitral awards.

Several years ago, the Australian Information Commissioner decided that, subject to security and privacy and so forth, all of its public-sector information should be, “free, easily discoverable, machine readable and re-useable.”

In his Introduction to the study of the Law of the Constitution, which appeared in its first edition in 1885, Professor A. V. Dicey of the University of Oxford emphasized in particular the doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty and the concept of the Rule of Law as guiding principles of the constitution. His exposition was clear and trenchant, inspired by the self-confidence of late Victorian Britain, and through nine editions it provided the authoritative text which to this day has influenced judges and lawyers, politicians, observers from abroad, and many others in their interpretation of the constitutional law of the United Kingdom.

This study examines the interpretation of the American Bar Association's accreditation standard for law schools in the United States and the effect it could have on minority students studying in such law schools. It shows how such students will be greatly disadvantaged. It also shows the principle underlying the solution and how academic law libraries can aid in solving the problem and make a diverse bar a reality.

Land use law or zoning law (Derecho urbanístico, in Spanish, or Droit de l'urbanisme, in French) deals with the regulation ofland use. The regulation of urban planning is a part of that legal branch. Urban planning decides about the existence and situation of housing (including affordable housing), green areas, schools and other important infrastructures in the cities.

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are among the most technologically advanced countries in the world. It is not surprising, therefore, to find sophisticated online systems offering extensive access to legal information in each country. This article briefly traces the development of online legal information in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In addition, it provides a country by country overview of the legal databases and online guides to electronic legal resources that are currently available. Most of the databases discussed can be accessed, wholly or in part, without charge via the Internet. A few are restricted to paid subscribers or are available only on CD-ROM. It should be noted that, while Denmark and Sweden are members of the European Union, this article does not cover the databases in either country specifically devoted to European Union law.