Effective e-access to court decisions

ended

Access to case law is fundamentally important for the rule of law. At present, reading a case law citation in legal documents is difficult and time-consuming, different citation rules and styles in various national and cross-border case law databases complicate the search. To facilitate easy access to citation of national and EU case law – the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) will be introduced in the Lithuania judiciary system. The aim of the project is to assure a unified case law in application of EU law by introducing the ECLI into the Lithuanian Courts Information System (hereinafter – LITEKO). Objectives of the project: to alleviate the correct citation of court decisions by introducing ECLI into LITEKO and to integrate to ECLI Search Engine of the European e-Justice Portal; to facilitate the adjudication procedure and to make effective developing procedure of the judicial decisions; to improve the accessibility of case law documents by enhancing the searchability, findability and citability of jurisprudence and by assuring cross-border accessibility of case law. By implementing the project, current situation related to ECLI development will be analyzed, ECLI will be developed into Lithuanian court information system LITEKO and integrated into e-Justice Portal. As well a user manual will be developed for the usage of ECLI. The electronic tool developed will simplify citing of the case-law of national and European courts; all legal professionals will profit by spending less time on studying citation style guides and searching for the right identifiers; will improve case law search over multiple depositories by having a unique identifier (ECLI); will improve the application of EU law by judges in Lithuania; will reinforce mutual understanding between the legal communities of the EU Member States; will reinforce the rule of law, since by improved accessibility of case law the transparency of justice and the rule of law will be strengthened.