Online Publication of Court Decisions in Europe

Abstract

Although nowadays most courts publish decisions on the internet, substantial differences exist between European countries regarding such publication. These differences not only pertain to the extent with which judgments are published and anonymised, but also to their metadata, searchability and reusability. This article contains a synthesis of a comprehensive comparative study on the publication of court decisions within all Member States of the European Union (http://ssrn.com/abstract=3088495). Specific attention is paid on the legal and policy frameworks governing case law publication, actual practices, data protection issues, Open Data policies as well as the state of play regarding the implementation of the European Case Law Identifier.

Keywords: Court Decisions, Electronic Publishing, Data Protection, Open Data, European Union, ECLI

JEL Classification: K10, K40