Conference Announcement

Background Informations :

In 1997, 1999 and 2001 the first three International “Law via the Internet” Conferences were held in Sydney(Australia) by the Australasian Institute of Legal Information, AUSTLII. In 2002, it was the LexUM lab at the University of Montreal, developer of the Canadian Legal Information Institute assignment, who organised this International Conference in North America. Last fall, AustLII once again hosted this event in Sydney. Throughout the years the International Conference of “Law Via the Internet” has become known as the main conference focusing on the uses of the Internet for the Law and related issues.

This Conference periodicaly brings together members of the Commonwealth countries, the United States of America, French speaking countries, the twenty five countries of European Union, and developping countries.

This Conference is intended for all the actors in the legal realm: authorities, civil servants, local gouvernment officers, members of Parliament, professors, researchers, judges, attorneys, lawyers, as well the diverse contributors and participants in the process of publishing and consulting legal information on the Web.

2004 - The year of the digitisation of law in Europe :

Paris was chosen for the 2004 edition of the Law via the Internet Conference, because it was here, two hundred years ago that the Civil Code was promulgated by Napoleon. Internet and XML code are highly instrumental in the creation of the law and the process of codification. Hence, the Conference is one of the official events of this Bicentenial of the Civil Code. The year 2004 is also that of the certification of the electronic version of the French Official Journal.

At the end of the year, the French government will propose the new version of its legal internet portal Legifrance and the European Union will offer free access of the Celex Database. Meanwhile, many European institutions (countries, European Union Council, European Parliament, European Union Commission) already provide free access to their essential legal information on the Internet.

France is proud to be one of the first of the European countries to host this international conference. The conference is organised by three associations : ADBS,
ADIJ and Juriconnexion, with the essential assistance of LexUM. This special event was also made possible by the support and cooperation of the International Association of Comparative Law Henri Capitant and the French Committee for the Civil Code Bicentenial.

Brief presentation of the layout of this conference:

Since its creation, the conference has included three parallel forums:
 one main session open to every participant, institutional or private
 two special sessions reserved for the members of juridical information institutes: a technical session (tools and techniques of lining up juridical data)and one institutional session (relations between juridical information institutes, public institutions, and private bodies)

These last two sessions will take place on the morning of the Wednesday, November 3rd.

During the afternoon of Wednesday, November 3rd there will be an open conference bringing together members of juridical formation institutes as well as outside speakers, dealing with the conservation of legal data in electronic format.

The following themes will be discussed: the archiving of Internet and Intranet public sites, the access to different historical versions of texts, as well as the creation of their electronic copyrights.

This event will take place on the Ile de la Cité in Paris at the very birthplace of our great city (near the Palais de Justice, Notre Dame, La Sainte Chapelle).

Please note that during the plenary sessions, simultaneous translation from French to English and English to French will be available.

For more information about this event, please send an email to organisation@frlii.org.