Finding Case Law on a European Scale - Current Practice and Future Work

Abstract

There is a growing awareness that the national judge plays a vital role in the European legal system, as is illustrated by the emergence of various initiatives for the cross-border access of national (EU-related) case law. Because these and various national systems all use their own identifiers, findability and citability are seriously hampered. This paper assesses current developments and tries to define a solution for remaining problems. A European Case Law Identifier and a central index are fundamental elements in this solution.

Keywords: legal informatics, case law identification, citation