Open Access to Law

Public access to statutory and case law is very limited in many parts of the world. Making use of lessons learned from its Open Access work in recent years, the Information Program is supporting projects which expand access to legal materials.

We work with an international network of legal information institutes that collaborate with governments, courts, and bar associations to collect and make law corpora freely available. Together with the Open Society foundations in Southern Africa, the Information Program is supporting the development of such an infrastructure in 16 countries across the region.

In 2010-11 we will apply the expertise developed in Southern Africa to support the expansion of open access to law in West Africa, and will investigate the need and potential in Eastern Europe and CIS countries. Further, the project may support work to formulate privacy policies that balance judicial transparency with personal privacy, and to develop standards that will allow collections to interoperate across administrative and jurisdictional boundaries.

If you are considering applying for funding under this initiative, please email the relevant program manager (see link, below) with a brief description of your project. They will be able to advise you if your proposal is suitable for funding from OSI, and guide you through the application process from there.

View contact information for this initiative.