The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII, pronounced "Bailey") provides legal information, and especially reports of cases decided by courts, in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

generally. Decisions from

England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is Eng ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

, the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

, and from the

European Court of Human Rights The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court of the Council of Europe which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. The court hears applications alleging that ...

are put online. It is a partial online database of British and Irish legislation, case law, law reform reports, treaties and some legal scholarship.

Background

Traditionally, legal information was accessible through a law report, usually written by private individuals or groups. While court judgments have had official reports more recently, historically a court judgment would simply be spoken, and so publication of the precedents built up depended on their record by interested third parties. The

Year Books The Year Books are the modern English name that is now typically given to the earliest law reports of England. Substantial numbers of manuscripts circulated during the later medieval period containing reports of pleas heard before the Common B ...

, which recorded judgments from 1268 to 1535, were probably compiled by law students. Other people, like the judge

Sir Edward Coke ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as ...

from 1572 to 1615, then created their own series of reports. These would not necessarily be an accurate record of what was said. What was recorded might have been selective, or inaccurate. As the reporting industry developed, more people became involved and specialised in particular areas of law. The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting was created in 1885, and released copies of various cases. There still could be gaps in reporting however. With the advent of the Internet, it was possible to access multiple databases for a fee online, particularly

Westlaw Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statu ...

or Lexis. However a freely available source had not yet been made. BAILII was set up after a long and hard campaign by various activists including senior members of the Society for Computers & Law, such as then-chairman Neil Cameron, barrister Laurie West-Knights QC, Lord Saville and Lord Justice Brooke, who were concerned about the lack of availability of court judgments to ordinary court users and were inspired by the

Australasian Legal Information Institute The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) is an institution operated jointly by the Faculties of Law of the University of Technology Sydney and the University of New South Wales. Its public policy purpose is to improve access to just ...

(AustLII) LII. The aim was to provide free access to publicly available legal information. In 2006, BAILII included fourteen databases from five

jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...

s. The BAILII website is jointly hosted by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies,

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

and the

University College Cork University College Cork – National University of Ireland, Cork (UCC) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh) is a constituent university of the National University of Ireland, and located in Cork. The university was founded in 1845 as one ...

's Law school

Case citations

Bailii uses a " neutral citation" method, which was quickly adopted as a standard for citation of cases. The different series of cases that Bailii produces are as follows.

Criticism

BAILII has received criticisms due to the restrictions it imposes on its usage: in a '' Guardian'' editorial, it was noted that BAILII had "done a wonderful job of making case law freely accessible to lawyers", including "historic and European data that is otherwise very difficult to find." However, it was also noted that as a small charity the service "struggles to afford to host its 297,000 judgments, and does not allow search engines to index them. In some instances it is not even clear whether the crown or the judge concerned holds the

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

to the words, and reproducing them on any other site is forbidden." An organization known as Judgmental had been established to scrape information from BAILII and make it indexable by search engines. Founding members of Judgmental included Francis Irving, one of the developers of

TheyWorkForYou TheyWorkForYou is a parliamentary monitoring website operated by mySociety which aims to make it easier for UK citizens to understand what is going on in Westminster, as well as the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembl ...

. Judgmental shut down under threat of legal action regarding the court records for a libel case. Former BAILII chairman Henry Brooke defended criticisms, stating that the restrictions on indexing were to ensure that records could be retroactively edited or removed for clerical or legal reasons, such as errors, information that was not authorized to be published, or records that have not been properly anonymized. Brooke went on to explain that BAILII "

oes Oes or owes were metallic "O" shaped rings or eyelets sewn on to clothes and furnishing textiles for decorative effect in England and at the Elizabethan and Jacobean court. They were smaller than modern sequins. Making and metals Robert Sharp obta ...

not consider that taking the extra step of making the judgments searchable, using Google or other search engines, is necessary in order to achieve the primary objective of making judgments of the courts freely available to the public." He also stated that the restriction on redistribution was to protect its "value-added content", such as "converting it into a suitable format and making efforts to prevent the publication of material that must not be published."

Access to case law

Much of the material available on BAILII is duplicated elsewhere, for example legislation and rulings of some courts (such as the Supreme Court). BAILII has an agreement with the Ministry of Justice indemnifying it from some legal prosecutions. BAILII has historically received payment as part of this contract. In the 2010/2011 tax year BAILII received as part of this contract.

Notes

External links