European Case Law Identifier
Rome
14 October 2014
Marc van Opijnen
Knowledge Center for Official Governmental Publications Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations
the Netherlands
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Topics
Why ECLI?
The ECLI ecosystem:
Identifier
Metadata
National co-ordinator
European ECLI portal
Implementation: state of play
Future work.
Why ECLI?
Legal research problems:
How to cite a judgment (cross-border)?
How to find a judgment?
By identifier
By metadata
How to find citations to a judgment (in case law or legal doctrine)?
Cilfit: obligation for the national judge
to consult case law of other MS.
ECLI Ecosystem 1: Identifier
Identifies the judgment, not the case
Identifies the judgment at an abstract level, not a specific document
Vendor and medium neutral
As citation readable by humans and computers
Not (necessarily) replacing national identifiers
Fixed format of (always) five elements:
country:court: year: number NL: HR: 2012: 938
ECLI:
ECLI:
EU:C:1982: 335 ECLI:
ECLI Ecosystem 2: Metadata
Based on international standard 'Dublin Core'
Mandatory / optional
Most allow different language versions, e.g.
an English summary on a Spanish judgment
Technical scheme available.
ECLI Ecosystem 3: National Co-ordinator
Court codes
Fifth part of ECLI
Maintain information on e-Justice portal
National implementation, technical and organizational
Introduction in stages
With or without historical records
Connecting to the EU ECLI portal.
ECLI Ecosystem 4: EU portal
Part of the European e-Justice portal.
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Implementation: State of Play
Implementation ECLI
Court of Justice of the European Union
Board of Appeal
European Patent Office European Court of Human Rights
(Partly) implemented and public Work in progress
No implementation started Non-EU
Legend
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EN
DE
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NL
Future Work
Going live of the portal (2015-Q1)
More implementations of ECLI
More countries / organizations
More courts within participating entities
Historical records
More secundary data providers
Better embedded within the European
legal semantic web.
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No results
No explicit metadata
No uniform standard (CELEX / ELI)
If in text: not recognized:
Too many citation styles.
What is needed?
Proper citation
Preferably: hyperlinked …
Alternatively: link extractors
Computers recognize the citation and converts it into a standardized hyperlink
Advantages
Click on any legal citation (case law, national or European legislation, parliamentary documents)
Search on links, e.g.: give me all national case law making a reference to the Cilfit judgment, or
Regulation (EC) nr. 1408/71. 22
