Perhaps we can help here, with open source programs that can go some way to crossreferencing legislation and case law and deciphering legalese, and presenting the data to citizens in a format that they can digest.

Since the raw data is mostly available to the public in some form, and more and more of it is directly and freely available on the internet, you'd think the various law reform societies around the world would be keen to collaborate with computer scientists to build something along these lines that would be immediately usable to the citizen and professional alike, as well as being a potentially useful tool for studying effects of proposed changes in a quantifiable way.

I'm not saying that today we can use natural language techniques of advanced AI, but there are a lot of pieces of technical jargon that could be demystified by a hypertext link or three, and rewriting rules could be used to make the text more understandable in places where it is currently impenetrable to those who have no legal training.

I assume there are commercial concerns whose job it is to provide a related service, but perhaps we could 'steal a march' on them, before they get wind of this post and get a bogus patent on the idea.

A Web 2.0 OpenLaws project, anyone?

I've done little research on this, so if anyone knows of such a project, please do tell.

Regards, Non.