Declaration on Free Access to Law
- Public legal information from all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of humanity. Maximising access to this information promotes justice and the rule of law;
- Public legal information is digital common property and should be accessible to all on a non-profit basis and free of charge;
- Organisations such as legal information institutes have the right to publish public legal information and the government bodies that create or control that information should provide access to it so that it can be published by other parties.
Publish via the internet public legal information originating from more than one public body;
Provide free and anonymous public access to that information;
Do not impede others from obtaining public legal information from its sources and publishing it; and
Support the objectives set out in this Declaration.
- To promote and support free access to public legal information throughout the world, principally via the Internet;
- To recognise the primary role of local initiatives in free access publishing of their own national legal information;
- To cooperate in order to achieve these goals and, in particular, to assist organisations in developing countries to achieve these goals, recognising the reciprocal advantages that all obtain from access to each other's law;
- To help each other and to support, within their means, other organisations that share these goals with respect to:
Promotion, to governments and other organisations, of public policy conducive to the accessibility of public legal information;
- Technical assistance, advice and training;
- Development of open technical standards;
- Academic exchange of research results.
- To meet at least annually, and to invite other organisations who are legal information institutes to subscribe to this declaration and join those meetings, according to procedures to be established by the parties to this Declaration;
- To provide to the end users of public legal information clear information concerning any conditions of re-use of that information, where this is feasible.