Comparative law wiki

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Comparative law wikis are wikis that allow users to create empirical cross-reference datasets for the analysis of the world's myriad legal systems.

Contents

Examples

Over the past decade, there have been several attempts to create a global legal wiki, [1] though as of April 2017 none have gained primacy. Examples include the World Encyclopedia of Law, by LAWi [2] and Wex, the online legal encyclopedia created by Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute. Parallel efforts to create crowdsourced data structures to map global legal/regulatory authorities include projects like Intellipedia, an online system for collaborative data sharing used by the United States Intelligence Community (IC).

Usefulness

Comparative law wikis are an efficient method of performing comparative legal analysis. Wikis are particularly useful for comparative global analysis because of the use with which sources from multiple jurisdictions can be gathered in one place. [3] Crowdsourcing permits gathering up-to-date legal authorities from contributors who have local expertise, particularly knowledge of languages and administrative structures that background implementation of particular legal/regulatory norms.

Comparative law wikis can also be useful for comparative study in federal legal systems, such as in the U.S., where 50-state law surveys are particularly useful.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comparative law</span> Study of relationship between legal systems

Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law of different countries. More specifically, it involves the study of the different legal "systems" in existence in the world, including the common law, the civil law, socialist law, Canon law, Jewish Law, Islamic law, Hindu law, and Chinese law. It includes the description and analysis of foreign legal systems, even where no explicit comparison is undertaken. The importance of comparative law has increased enormously in the present age of internationalism, economic globalization, and democratization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki</span> Type of website that visitors can edit

A wiki is a form of online hypertext publication, collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki software</span> Software to run a collaborative wiki. (Including private wiki)

Wiki software is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application that runs on one or more web servers. The content, including previous revisions, is usually stored in either a file system or a database. Wikis are a type of web content management system, and the most commonly supported off-the-shelf software that web hosting facilities offer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International relations</span> Study of relationships between two or more states

International relations (IR) are the interactions among sovereign states. The scientific study of those interactions is also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns all activities among states—such as war, diplomacy, trade, and foreign policy—as well as relations with and among other international actors, such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), international legal bodies, and multinational corporations (MNCs). There are several schools of thought within IR, of which the most prominent are realism, liberalism, and constructivism.

Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For example:

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is an Australian government statutory authority within the Communications portfolio. ACMA was formed on 1 July 2005 with the merger of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Australian Communications Authority.

Governance is the process of making and enforcing decisions within an organization or society. It is the process of interactions through the laws, social norms, power or language as structured in communication of an organized society over a social system. It is done by the government of a state, by a market, or by a network. It is the process of choosing the right course among the actors involved in a collective problem that leads to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of acceptable conduct and social order". In lay terms, it could be described as the processes that exist in and between formal institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comparative genomics</span>

Comparative genomics is a field of biological research in which the genomic features of different organisms are compared. The genomic features may include the DNA sequence, genes, gene order, regulatory sequences, and other genomic structural landmarks. In this branch of genomics, whole or large parts of genomes resulting from genome projects are compared to study basic biological similarities and differences as well as evolutionary relationships between organisms. The major principle of comparative genomics is that common features of two organisms will often be encoded within the DNA that is evolutionarily conserved between them. Therefore, comparative genomic approaches start with making some form of alignment of genome sequences and looking for orthologous sequences in the aligned genomes and checking to what extent those sequences are conserved. Based on these, genome and molecular evolution are inferred and this may in turn be put in the context of, for example, phenotypic evolution or population genetics.

Neo-Gramscianism is a critical theory approach to the study of international relations (IR) and the global political economy (GPE) that explores the interface of ideas, institutions and material capabilities as they shape the specific contours of the state formation. The theory is heavily influenced by the writings of Antonio Gramsci. Neo-Gramscianism analyzes how the particular constellation of social forces, the state and the dominant ideational configuration define and sustain world orders. In this sense, the neo-Gramscian approach breaks the decades-old stalemate between the realist schools of thought and the liberal theories by historicizing the very theoretical foundations of the two streams as part of a particular world order and finding the interlocking relationship between agency and structure. Karl Polanyi, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault are cited as major sources within the critical theory of IR.

In administrative law, rulemaking is the process that executive and independent agencies use to create, or promulgate, regulations. In general, legislatures first set broad policy mandates by passing statutes, then agencies create more detailed regulations through rulemaking.

In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Compliance has traditionally been explained by reference to the deterrence theory, according to which punishing a behavior will decrease the violations both by the wrongdoer and by others. This view has been supported by economic theory, which has framed punishment in terms of costs and has explained compliance in terms of a cost-benefit equilibrium. However, psychological research on motivation provides an alternative view: granting rewards or imposing fines for a certain behavior is a form of extrinsic motivation that weakens intrinsic motivation and ultimately undermines compliance.

Legal research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a problem and concludes with the application and communication of the results of the investigation."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legal Information Institute</span> Non-profit free legal information service at Cornell Law School

The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a non-profit public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and Tom Bruce, LII was the first law site developed on the internet. LII electronically publishes on the Web the U.S. Code, U.S. Supreme Court opinions, Uniform Commercial Code, the US Code of Federal Regulations, several Federal Rules, and a variety of other American primary law materials. LII also provides access to other national and international sources, such as treaties and United Nations materials. According to its website, the LII serves over 40 million unique visitors per year.

Wex is a collaboratively-edited legal dictionary and encyclopaedia, intended for broad use by "practically everyone, even law students and lawyers entering new areas of law".

Electronic discovery refers to discovery in legal proceedings such as litigation, government investigations, or Freedom of Information Act requests, where the information sought is in electronic format. Electronic discovery is subject to rules of civil procedure and agreed-upon processes, often involving review for privilege and relevance before data are turned over to the requesting party.

Legal anthropology, also known as the anthropology of laws, is a sub-discipline of anthropology follows inter disciplinary approach which specializes in "the cross-cultural study of social ordering". The questions that Legal Anthropologists seek to answer concern how is law present in cultures? How does it manifest? How may anthropologists contribute to understandings of law?

In communication, media are the communication outlets or tools used to store and deliver content. The term generally refers to components of the mass media communications industry, such as print media, publishing, the news media, photography, cinema, broadcasting, digital media, and advertising.

Reverse engineering is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accomplishes a task with very little insight into exactly how it does so. Depending on the system under consideration and the technologies employed, the knowledge gained during reverse engineering can help with repurposing obsolete objects, doing security analysis, or learning how something works.

The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is a unique global identifier for legal entities participating in financial transactions. Also known as an LEI code or LEI number, its purpose is to help identify legal entities on a globally accessible database. Legal entities are organisations such as companies or government entities that participate in financial transactions. An individual person may not obtain an LEI. The identifier is used in regulatory reporting to financial regulators and all financial companies and funds are required to have an LEI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media independence</span> Absence of external control on a media institution

Media independence is the absence of external control and influence on an institution or individual working in the media. It is a measure of its capacity to "make decisions and act according to its logic," and distinguishes independent media from state media.

References

  1. "Normann Witzleb, Engaging with the World: Students of Comparative Law Write for Wikipedia" (PDF). Legal Education Review (2009).
  2. "World Encyclopedia of Law". LAWi. 8 August 2020.
  3. Kennedy, Dennis; Mighell, Tom (February 2007). "Wikis for the Legal Profession". American Bar Association. Archived from the original on 11 September 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2017.