Court Decisions On The Internet: Development of A Legal Framework in Europe by Marc Van Opijnen

Court Decisions on the Internet:
Development of a Legal Framework in Europe

MARC VAN OPIJNEN*
Abstract
This paper discusses the gradual development of a legal framework in Europe regarding
the publication and accessibility of court decisions on the internet. The evolving
doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights on the public pronouncement of
judgment is assessed, as are developments in national legislations with regard to the full
or selected publication of case law. Specific attention is paid to data protection, Open
Data and the European Case Law Identifier.
Introduction
In most European countries with a civil law tradition, the dissemination of

(important) court decisions had been a monopoly of commercial legal
publishers for decades. As in many other societal areas the internet changed
everything: courts started to publish decisions themselves, thereby not only
disrupting the legal information market, but also contributing significantly
to the visibility of the judiciary and the transparency of justice.
While the pioneering started in a vacuum, a legal framework now is
gradually evolving. In this paper the four most importantand intertwined
aspects of this legal framework will be reviewed. The first question is to
what extent there is any legal obligation to publish decisions on the internet.
To this end in Part 1 the evolving case law of the European Court of Human
Rights (ECHR) on the public pronouncement of the judgment will be
evaluated, as well as practice and legal framework regarding the publication
of decisions from European courts and the legal frameworks at the national
level, paying specific attention to the problem of selection. The overarching
problem of data protection is discussed in Part 2 and the rapid developments
with regard to Open Data are the subject of Part 3. To increase the usability
of all these data published, standardisation of identifiers and metadata is of
Mr. dr. M van Opijnen is adviser legal infomatics at the Publications Office of the
Netherlands (UBR|KOOP). This article is partly based on his PhD thesis On and In
the Web. How the Accessibility of Case Law can be Improved (Op en in het web. Hoe de
toegankelijkheid van rechterlijke uitspraken kan worden verbeterd), University of
Amsterdam, Boom Juridische Uitgevers, 2014). The text was concluded in September
2016.
Court decisions on the Internet
27

crucial importance. This will be discussed in Part 4, with a special focus on
the European Case Law Identifier. Some conclusions will be drawn in Part 5.
An Obligation to Publish
2.1 The Doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights
For the legitimacy of the judiciary it is of crucial importance that everybody

can see how justice is done. Therefore, art 6, para 1 of the European
Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms reads:
Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may
be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals,
public order or national security in a democratic society, where the
interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties
so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the
court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the
interests of justice.
So, while access to the hearing may be restricted, the judgment itself always
has to be pronounced in public for the scrutiny of justice and to prevent
secret trials. Comparable provisions can be found in national constitutions
throughout Europe, but of course the question arises what exactly is meant
by this public pronouncement of judgment.
The European Court of Human Rights has developed an interesting doctrine
on this topic, which has to be outlined in some detail to comprehend how
internet databases fit in. In 1983 the Court formulated its basic rule in the
often-cited judgment in Pretto v Italy (Pretto):
1
Many member States of the Council of Europe have a long-standing

tradition of recourse to other means, besides reading out aloud, for
making public the decisions of all or some of their courts, and
especially of their courts of cassation, for example deposit in a
registry accessible to the public. The authors of the Convention
cannot have overlooked that fact. The Court therefore does not
feel bound to adopt a literal interpretation. It considers that in each
case the form of publicity to be given to the judgment under the
domestic law of the respondent State must be assessed in the light of
(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:1983:1208JUD000798477, 8

December 1983).
28
Journal of Law, Information and Science
Vol 24(2) 2016

the special features of the proceedings in question and by reference
to the object and purpose of Article 6 para. 1.
2
Making decisions available in a publicly available register as a way of public

pronouncement was sanctioned by the Court in the Pretto itself, and in Sutter
v Switzerland the Court sanctioned a practice whereby interested outsiders
have to establish an interest to consult or obtain a copy from full text
judgments from such a register and whereby only a selection of (important)
decisions is published. In their dissenting opinion Cremona, Ganshof van
der Meersch, Walsh and MacDonald JJ argued that [p]ublic knowledge of
court decisions cannot be secured by confining that knowledge to a limited
class of persons, and the Court receded from Sutter in its decision in Szcs v
Austria of 1997, establishing a violation of art 6 by Austria on making access
to the full texts in the court registry dependent upon leave granted at the
discretion of the courts.
3
To meet the requirements of art 6, not only the individual judgment has to be
assessed. In Axen v Germany the absence of a public hearing, as well as a
public pronouncement of the decision of a court of highest instance rejecting
an appeal on formal grounds, was no breach of art 6 since:
6
[T]he object pursued by Article 6 para. 1 ... namely, to ensure

scrutiny of the judiciary by the public with a view to safeguarding
the right to a fair trial was achieved during the course of the
proceedings taken as a whole.
7
Ibid [26]. Because the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI), discussed below (in Part 4),
is intended as a neutral citation and suffices to find judgments online, case references
in this article deviate from the Australian Guide to Legal Citation.

February 1984) (Sutter).

November 1997).
Moser
v
Austria
(European
Court
of
Human
Rights,
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2006:0921JUD001264302, 21 September 2006) led to a comparable
conclusion.

December 1983) (Axen).
Ibid [32].
29

While in Axen the requirements were met by a preceding court, in Lamanna v
Austria it was ruled that the full public pronouncement can also be done in
appeal, even if the final decision is rendered many years later.
8
The Biryukov v Russia decision of 2008 is consistent with previous

jurisprudence. In this case only the operative part had been pronounced in
public, the full-text was only available to the parties and not to the public,
and there was no preceding decision in which the full text was publicly
pronounced: the European Court of Human Rights concluded to a violation
of art 6. The situation in Welke v Poland was comparable, but was sanctioned
by the Court because of a legislative provision allowing both hearings and
pronouncement of the courts reasoning to be held in camera because
otherwise state secrets would be revealed. Keeping a judgment completely
from the public for reasons of state securityeven if it concerns terrorist
activitiesis not allowed.
10
11
12
It should be stressed that while the European Court of Human Rights

considers public access to a register to be a sufficient means for public
pronouncement, it does not oblige to keep such a register, leaving aside the
question whether such a register should be accessible via the internet. Also,
the Court does not make an explicit distinction between the judgment in the
act of pronouncement (establishing a valid judicial decision) and the
judgment as a document that can be consulted after it has been pronounced.
Not only do they differ in an ontological sense, one can easily argue that the
(long-term) availability of decisions in an internet repository enhances the
possibilities for public scrutiny.
(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2001:0710JUD002892395, 10 July

2001).
Cf
Shmushkovych
v
Ukraine
(European
Court
of
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2013:1114JUD000327610, 14 November 2013).
10

January 2008) confirmed in Malmberg v Russia (European Court of Human Rights,
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2015:0115JUD002304505, 15 January 2015).
11
(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2011:0301JUD001592405, 1 March

2011).
12
Raza
v
Bulgaria
(European
Court
of
Human
Rights,
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2010:0211JUD003146508, 11 February 2010) [53]; Fazliyski v Bulgaria
(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2013:0416JUD004090805, 16 April
2013) [69]; Nikolova v Bulgaria (European Court of Human Rights,
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2013:1217JUD002068804, 17 December 2013) [85].
Human
Rights,
30
Vol 24(2) 2016

An obligation to publish (all) rendered judgments on a website cannot be
read in art 6 itself, nor in the case law of the Court. Since such an obligation
would entail major legal, technical, societal and financial consequences it
would arguably require an explicit decision by the state parties to the
European convention. On the other hand, the question whether publication
of a judgment on an internet site is to be regarded as public pronouncement
is not answered explicitly yet, but in Nikolova v Bulgaria, the Court seems to
hold that view by listing this possibility on an equal level as other recognised
ways of public pronouncement:
13
[T]he judgments given were not delivered in public and were not
available at the registry of the court or on its Internet site, nor could
the first applicant herself obtain a copy.
14
Publishing a judgment on the internet as a method of public pronouncement

has been suggested already by the late president of the Dutch Supreme
Court in 1999. Although it might be a very efficient method, data protection
issuesto be discussed belowcreate an insurmountable barrier to turning
this idea into practice.
15
Although implicitly, the technological ease with which court decisions can be
published on the internet also played a role in Ramsahai v the Netherlands.
The case was about a citizen who died by a police bullet. After investigations
the public prosecutor decided to drop charges against the police officer
concerned. Having an established interest the family of Ramsahai contested
this decision in a special complaints procedure before the Court of Appeal.
The order of this Court (confirming the Prosecutors decision) was not
pronounced in public. The European Court of Human Rights considered art
6 of the Convention not to be applicable, because it is confined to civil and
16

13

December 2013).
14
Ibid [84].
15
S Martens, With Rechtspraak.nl the Judiciary is in a Better Position to Comply with

the International Obligation Regarding the Public Pronouncement of Court
Decisions (Met Rechtspraak.nl kan de rechterlijke macht beter voldoen aan internationale
verplichting tot openbaarmaking vonissen) (2002) 1 Trema 1, also discussed in W Davids
and W Thomassen, 'Publication of Judgments on the Internet' in S Breitenmoser, B
Ehrenzeller and M Sassoli (eds), Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Liber
amicorum Luzius Wildhaber (Baden-Baden, Nomos, 2007) 1185.
16

November
2005)
and
(European
Court
of
Human
Rights,
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2007:0515JUD005239199, 15 May 2007).
31

criminal proceedings and does not cover such administrative procedures.
Still though, with a reference to Finucane v United Kingdom, it ruled:
17
Where it is decided that a person vested with public authority at

whose hands a human being has died should not face criminal
proceedings, Article 2 [for example, right to life] requires the
decision to be open to public scrutiny .
18
However, on appeal this decision was overthrown by the Grand Chamber:

The applicants were allowed full access to the investigation file and
were enabled to participate effectively in the Court of Appeals
hearing; they were provided with a reasoned decision. ... In addition,
given that the applicants were not prevented from making the decision
public themselves, the Court takes the view that the requirement of
publicity was satisfied to an extent sufficient to obviate the danger of
any improper cover-up by the Netherlands authorities.
19
If applied to art 6 as well, this decision would contradict all previous

jurisprudence. It would mean that as long as a party to a case has acquired a
full copy of the judgment, the judge would be dismissed from his obligation
of public pronouncement, since in these modern times (nearly) anybody has
the opportunity to make a judgment public. Although decided on a very
specific type of proceeding, the reasoning of the European Court of Human
Rights is startling; to ensure the scrutiny of justice [a]n obligation to make
the decision public cannot be placed on the applicants.
20
Meanwhile, at the national level many Member States of the Council of

Europe have adopted legislation that obliges (all or a selection of) court
decisions to be published on the internet, although nowhere as a way of
publicly pronouncing judgment. These national practices will be reviewed in
Part 2.3, after having discussed the publication of decisions of the European
Court of Human Rights itself and other judicial decisions of European
relevance.

17
(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2003:0701JUD002917895, 1 July

2003).
18
Ramsahai
v
the
Netherlands
(European
Court
of
Human
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2005:1110JUD005239199, 10 November 2005) [422].
19
Ramsahai
v
the
Netherlands
(European
Court
of
Human
Rights,
ECLI:CE:ECHR:2007:0515JUD005239199, 15 May 2007) [354] (emphasis added).
20
Jointly partly dissenting opinion of Joien and Popovi to the Grand Chamber
decision, 9.
Rights,
32
Vol 24(2) 2016

2.2 Dissemination of European Case Law
As established by art 44 para 3 of the European Convention judgments of the

European Court of Human Rights are to be published. The Convention has no
comparable provision for decisions (declaring an application inadmissible),
but such an obligation was introduced in 2002 by Resolution of the
Committee of Ministers, in which it was also decided that publication had
to be effectuated via an internet database.
21
Apart from the publication of its case law by the European Court of Human
Rights itself, the 47 member states of the Council of Europe themselves have
to publish the most relevant case law of the Court, alongside the text of the
European Convention; a 2002 recommendation of the Committee of Ministers
asks the member states to:
[E]nsure that judgments and decisions which constitute relevant
case-law developments, or which require special implementation
measures on their part as respondent states, are rapidly and widely
published ... in their entirety or at least in the form of substantial
summaries or excerpts in the language(s) of the country in,
where appropriate, the Internet sites.
22
The number of member states complying with this recommendation is rather

limited; the European Court of Human Rights recently took responsibility
itself by actively disseminating (non-authorised) translations of its most
relevant judgments.
Within the European Union, the legal framework regarding the publication
of the decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) is more
complicated and less explicit on publication on the internet. All decisions
23

21
Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, Resolution Res(2002)58 On the publication

and dissemination of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights.
22
Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, On the publication and dissemination in the

member states of the text of the European Convention on Human Rights and of the case-law
of the European Court of Human Rights (Recommendation R(2002)13, ii).
23
For an overview see Presentation of the European Court Reports (2016) Court of Justice
of the European Union <http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/P_106308/en/>.
33

though are published on the website of the CJEU itself, as well as on the
EUR-Lex website.
24
25
Especially of interest in the EU is the legal framework regarding the crossborder accessibility of EU-related case law. Since EU law is (partially)
applicable within the member states, the national judge has to implement
and interpret it. Already in 1982 the CJEU ruled in Srl CILFIT and Lanificio di
Gavardo SpA v Ministry of Health that national judges, when deciding cases
in which specific questions of European law are raised, have an obligation to
consult not only national and CJEU jurisprudence, but also decisions of other
member states courts. This obligation to consult the case law of European
colleagues implies a joint obligation to make national case law accessible, as
was reinforced by a resolution of the European Parliament in 2008. There
have been various initiatives by European judiciary networks and EU
funded programmes to live up to this obligation.
26
27
28
An even more explicit obligation to publish case law of European relevance

via the internet can be found in art 3 para 1 of the Second Protocol to the
2007 Lugano Convention on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of
Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters and related instruments: member
states are obliged to send to the European Commission all decisions from the
highest courts and relevant decisions from lower courts concerning the
Convention, while the Commission has to publish those decisions in a public
29

24
See Info Curia Case-law of the Court of Justice: Search Form (2016) Court of Justice of
the European Union <http://curia.europa.eu/juris/recherche.jsf?language=en>.
25
See Access to European Law (2016) EUR-Lex <http://eurlex.europa.eu>.
26
(European Court of Justice, ECLI:EU:C:1982:335, 6 October 1982).
27
European Parliament, The Role of the National Judge in the European Judicial System
(2007/2027(INI), CELEX:52008IP0352, 9 July 2008). In deviation of the Australian
Guide to Legal Citation most EU materials are (additionally) cited with their CELEX
number, since this is currently the most reliable method to find documents on the
EUR-Lex website (above n 21).
28
For an overview: M van Opijnen, Finding Case Law on a European Scale Current
Practice and Future Work, in E Francesconi, G Sartor and D Tiscornia (eds), Legal
Knowledge and Information Systems JURIX 2008: The Twenty-First Annual Conference
(IOS Press, 2008) 43. The project EU-cases can be added, EUCases (2016) EUCases
<http://www.eucases.eu>.
29
[2007] OJ L 339/3 (Lugano Convention).
34
Vol 24(2) 2016

database. With the Publications Office taking over responsibility from the
Commission, this JURE-database is now integrated in EUR-Lex.
30
A comparable obligation to send judicial decisions of legal interest to the

Commission can be found in art 15 para 2 of Council Regulation (EC) No
1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the Implementation of the Rules on Competition
Laid Down in Arts 81 and 82 of the Treaty, but this provision is not
accompanied by an obligation for the Commission to disseminate these
decisions.
31
32
2.3 Legal Frameworks at the National Level and the Problem of Selection
Two objectives are served by publishing court decisions on the internet. The
first is to serve the rule of law, encompassing for example, the scrutability of
the judiciary and the equitable application of the law. The second objective is
to inform the publiclawyers and laymen alikeabout the continuous
development of the law.
Theoretically the first goal requires all case law to be publishedwhich
might converge with using the internet as a method of public
pronouncement the second goal is best served by publication of a limited
number of cases, because, in the wording of the still only international legal
instrument on this topic, The Selection, Processing, Presentation, and Archiving
of Court Decisions in Legal Information Retrieval Systems: [S]election should
ensure ... that the accumulation of useless information is avoided.
33
34
35
This Recommendation tries to give guidance on the question of which court

decisions should be selected. One of the most important distinctions it makes

30
See JURE Jurisdiction, Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and

Commercial Matters (2016) EUR-Lex <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/collection/nlaw/jure.html>.
31
[2003] OJ L 1/1, CELEX: 32003R0001.
32
Although
the
(limited)
database
is
online:
Application of Competition Rules by National Courts Article 15(2) (2016) European
Commission:
Competition
<http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/antitrust/nationalcourts>.
33
Davids and Thomassen, above n 15.
34
Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, The Selection, Processing,

Presentation, and Archiving of Court Decisions in Legal Information Retrieval
Systems (Recommendation No R(95)11, 11 September 1995).
35
Ibid introductory text to para II of app II.
35

is between negative and positive selection criteria. Negative criteria are
at leastto be applied on the highest courts: all of their decisions should be
published, except:
[I]f the grounds on which they are based are stated according to a
standard formula of formula clause [or] if they concern questions
of evidence which are in agreement with existing case-law.
36
Positive criteria are to be applied to the decisions of lower courts. These

decisions should be published if they possibly are of interest for the
development of law, but at the same time the selection must be generally
representative, a criterion quite hard to make operational.
37
Most European countries nowadays apply the negative criterion for their
highest courts. In some countries this is based on explicit legislation. For
example, in Austria both negative and positive criteria have a legal basis: the
Minister of Justice is obliged to develop an internet database in which all
decisions of the Supreme Court have to be published, unless they are
declared ill-founded without extensive motivation. The database should
also contain the for the Supreme Court most important decisions of other
courts, which have to be published: In as far as they are of general interest,
exceeding the individual case.
38
39
40
Also in France all highest courts decisions have to be published, while from
the lower courts those decisions should be published: [w]hich are to be
selected on criteria suitable for the jurisdiction in question. In Spain those
41

36
Ibid s 5 of para II of app II.
37
Ibid s 2-2 of para III of app II.
38
Bundesgesetz ber den Obersten Gerichtshof 1968 [Supreme Court of Justice Act]
(Austria) 28 August 1968, ss 15, 15a.
39
Bundesgesetz ber den Obersten Gerichtshof 1968 [Supreme Court of Justice Act]
(Austria) 28 August 1968, ss 141, 152.
40
Gerichtsorganisationsgesetz 1896 [Organization of the Courts Act] (Austria) 27

November 1896, s 48a.
41
Dcret n 2002-1064 du 7 aot 2002 relatif au service public de la diffusion du droit par
l'internet [Decree 2002-1064 on the Public Service of Dissemination of Law via the
Internet] (France) 7 August 2002.
36
Vol 24(2) 2016

decisions from lower courts have to be published: [o]f which relevance and
academic interest justify publication.
42
In some countries it is completely left to the judiciary to make a selection, in

some others more detailed rules are formulated, for example, in Belgium.
But even then these criteria are often formulated in a very general wording,
leavingtoomuch room for debate and interpretation, for example:
43
[D]ecisions in which completely new arguments are brought

forward [or] decisions in which a legal term is explained, in other
words, in which a legal rule is being formulated or changed.
44
The absence of more detailed guidelines can easily be used as an excuse for a
very limited selection.
In the Netherlands, a generous selection of decisions from district and
appellate courts has been a policy goal of the judiciary portal website from
its start in 1999. It now contains a balanced mix: 169,000 decisions from the
four highest courts, 72,000 courts of appeal judgments and 139,000 cases
from district courts. In the Netherlands there is no legislation on the internet
publication of judicial decisions, but the selection criteriafully redrafted in
2012are quite elaborated. Apart from legal importance, also societal
impact is an important selection criterion and by grouping negative, positive,
objective and subjective criteria as well as by putting emphasis on
45
46

42
Cuya trascendencia e inters doctrinal justifique su difusin [Of which relevance and
academic interest justify publication]. See Acuerdo de 7 de mayo de 1997, del Pleno del
Consejo General del Poder Judicial, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento 1/1997, del Centro de
Documentacin Judicial, art 8.
43
See Selectieregels voor de rechtspraak opgenomen in de externe gegevensbank voor de

rechtspraak [Selection Rules for Case Law in the External Database of the Judiciary]
(Belgium), 5 October 2007, NUMAC 2007009841. See also H van Bossuyt and B de
Groote, Free Access to Law and Judicial Decisions: Solutions and Challenges from a
Belgian Viewpoint, in G Peruginelli and M Ragona (eds), Law via the Internet. Free
Access, Quality of Information, Effectiveness of Rights (Florence, 30/31-10-2008) (European
Press Academic Publishing, 2008) 371.
44
Selection Rules, above n 43.
45
De Rechtspraak, Zoeken in uitspraken <http://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl>.
46
Raad voor de rechtspraak/ [Council for the Judiciary], /Besluit selectiecriteria

uitsprakendatabank Rechtspraak.nl 2012 /[Decision on Selection Criteria case law
database
Rechtspraak.nl
2012]
(Netherlands),
2012,
Rechtspraak.nl
<https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Uitspraken-ennieuws/Uitspraken/Paginas/Selectiecriteria.aspx>
37

operational wordings, these criteria give clear guidance to judges and offer
transparency to the public. After some introductory provisions art 3 states
the negative selection criterion for all (four) highest courts and specialised
chambers of three other courts. For district and appellate courts arts 46
define positive criteria, starting in art 4 with the most objective ones. Some of
those are of a procedural nature for example, decisions starting or
following a preliminary reference proceeding at the CJEU or decisions within
the framework of the 2007 Lugano Convention other objective criteria are of
a more substantive nature: for example, criminal cases in which the accused
is sentenced to at least four years imprisonment (regardless of the crime) or
cases in which someone is prosecuted for murder, manslaughter or a related
crime (regardless of the decision). Article 5 contains positive criteria of a
more subjective nature: cases that have attracted media attention, decisions
that are published or reviewed in legal periodicals or are of particular
relevance for special interest groups, will affect the interests of natural or
legal persons not involved in the case itself, or can be expected to be
influential on legal doctrine. Finally, art 6 determines that decisions not
specifically meeting one of the positive criteria listed should nevertheless be
published as much as possible, as long as they do not merely consist of
standard formula.
47
There are also a substantial number of European countries though where

negative criteria are also applied to lower courts, because scrutability of the
judiciary seems to have been the most determining motive in drafting
legislation on the publication of judicial decisions. In Bulgaria publication of
all judicial decisions is imposed by art 64 para 1 of the
[Judiciary System Act], and in the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia art 10 of the Court Case Management Act stipulates that every
decision has to be published on the internet within two days after it has been
rendered. Obstructing the case law database to function as a collective
memory of legal development, para 4 prescribes that decisions have to be
removed from the repository after five years. In Lithuania art 39 of the
Lithuanian Court Act requires publication of all decisions, with the
48
49
50
51

47
Lugano Convention [2007] OJ L 339/3.
48
[Judiciary System Act 2007] (Bulgaria).
49
[Court Case
Management Act] (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).
50
In criminal cases other terms apply.
51
Lietuvos Respublikos teism statymo [The Republic of Lithuania Court Act] (Lithuania).
38
Vol 24(2) 2016

exception of a few categories. In Estonia the Public Information Act lays
down the basic principle that all decisions have to be published, but the,
hierarchically higher, procedural laws allow exceptions; family cases are
hardly published, but most other civil as well as criminal cases are,
although in sensitive cases it is allowed to confine publication to the
operative part. Also in Russia the full texts of court decisions are to be
published on the internet, with an exception for cases relating to state
security and personal and family cases.
52
53
54
55
56
Publishing allor mostdecisions on the internet might be counterproductive though. It is illusory to propound that the judiciary can be
effectively monitored by just putting hundreds of thousands of anonymised,
untagged and unstructured decisions online. In addition, publishing these
enormous volumes means that the second function of case law publication is
also endangered: the law-shaping voice of the judge in potentially landmark
decisions is muted by a tsunami of legally irrelevant cases.
As a consequence, if it is considered essential for reasons of judicial
transparency to stick to the negative criteria also for the lower courts, some
kind of a tagging mechanism is absolutely required to meet also the second
objective of case law publication.
The European Court of Human Rights has developed a workable solution.
As prescribed by the Committee of Ministers, the Court publishes all of its
decisions and judgments, but uses a classification scheme with four
importance levels. The highest category contains all decisions which have
been published (since 1998) in the Case Reports, the other three are labelled
(from low to high importance): 3, 2, 1. To give an indication of the
57

52
With more detailed provisions in a decision of the Council for the Judiciary
(Nacionalin teism administracija). See Teism tarybos 2005 m. rugsjo 9 d. nutarimu
Nr. 13P-378 Change to: /Nutarimas dl teism sprendim, nuosprendi,
nutarim ir nutari skelbimo internete tvarkos patvirtinimo/ [Ruling on publication
of judgments, sentences and orders on the Internet] (Lithuania)
53
Avaliku teabe seadus [Public Information Act] (Estonia).
54
Due to the discretionary powers given to the judge based on Tsiviilkohtumenetluse

seadustik [Code of Civil Procedure] (Estonia), art 462.
55
Kriminaalmenetluse seadustik [Code of Criminal Procedure] (Estonia) art 4081.
56
Federal Law No. 262-FZ of 22 December 2008 on the Provision of Access to Information on
the Activities of Courts in the Russian Federation (Russia) art 15.
57
Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, The Publication and

Dissemination of the Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (Resolution
Res(2002)58, 18 December 2002).
39

distribution of decisions over these categories, from the highest to the lowest
level: 3%, 4%, 11%, 82%.
58
At the European Court of Human Rights the adjudication of cases to these

categories is done manually. With their limited number of cases this is
doable, but for a court system with a yearly production of hundreds of
thousands of decisions it is not. Smart algorithms might come to the rescue.
Citation analysis is the most obvious method, since authority can be
established by counting the number of incoming citations. Notwithstanding
its usability this method fails on decisions recently rendered or if one wants
to discriminate between decisions that have not been cited in other decisions
(as is the case with many decisions from lower courts). Hence additional
variables have to be taken into account; the Model for Automated Rating of
Case law (MARC) uses for example, outgoing citations (to legislation as
well as to case law), selection for publication on a judiciary website or in
commercial periodicals, incoming citations from magazine articles and
treatises, type of court and length of the decision. It turns out that data which
are only available on the date of pronouncement or shortly afterwards offer
reliable predictors for future citations.
59
60
Data protection
At the turn of the century there was debate on the balance between the need
for transparency and scrutinyas expressed in art 6 of the European
Conventionand the protection of privacy as laid down in art 8 of
Convention. Protagonists of full and unselected publication held that personal
data in judgments [c]an be necessary for the exercise of public scrutiny,
and therefore should not be rendered anonymous. One argument was drawn
from the fact that the European Court of Human Rights itself did not
61

58
As of September 2016. Until June 2012 there were three levels (high, medium and low
importance) with then a distribution of 7%, 11% and 82%. As can be learned from
comparing the two distributions the Case Reports documents have been in category 1
before.
59
See, eg, A Mowbray, P Chung, and G Greenleaf, Free-access Case Law

Enhancements for Australian Law, in G Peruginelli and M Ragona (eds), Law via the
Internet. Free Access, Quality of Information, Effectiveness of Rights (Florence, 30/31-102008) (European Press Academic Publishing, 2009) 28598; J H Fowler and S Jeon,
The Authority of Supreme Court precedent (2008) 30 Social Networks 16.
60
M van Opijnen, A Model for Automated Rating of Case Law (Paper presented at
Fourteenth International Conference on Articifial Intelligence and Law, Rome, 13
June 2013) 140.
61
Davids and Thomassen, above n 15, 1194.
40
Vol 24(2) 2016

anonymise its judgments; at that time rule 47 para 3 of the Rules of Court
read:
Applicants who do not wish their identity to be disclosed to the
public shall so indicate and shall submit a statement of the reasons
justifying such a departure from the normal rule of public access to
information in proceedings before the Court. The President of the
Chamber may authorise anonymity in exceptional and duly justified
cases.
62
However, art 8 won the debate gloriously. Nowadays in (nearly) all

European continental law countries court decisions are anonymised before
publication, and in many countries this anonymisation is regulated in the
same statutory provisions that prescribe the (massive or selected)
publication. Which data exactly have to be anonymised is sometimes
outlined in great detail, more often it is left to the discretion of the courts.
Even if more precise anonymisation instructions are drafted, they are hardly
published, and clear rules on how to object to the way a document is
anonymised are often lacking. In most countries the names of professionals
involved are not rendered anonymous; an exception can be found in Russia,
where names of lawyers and even of the hearing judges have to be
anonymised. A remarkable provision is to be found in Estonia, stating that
in criminal cases the name of the convict is not to be anonymised. To avoid
confusion with namesakes the personal identification number has to be
included.
63
64
65
66
Also the European Court of Human Rights itself followed the evolving state
practice: in 2008 it changed the cited provision of the Rules of Court, of

62
Registry of the European Court of Human Rights, Rules of Court (July 2006)
<http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Library_2006_RoC_ENG.pdf>.
63
The very detailed anonymization rules in the Netherlands are an exception. See de
Rechtspraak,
Anonimiseringsrichtlijnen
<http://rechtspraak.nl/Uitspraken-enRegisters/Uitspraken/Anonimiseringsrichtlijnen/Pages/default.aspx>.
64
In Belgium, Wet tot oprichting van het informatiesysteem Phenix [Act on the
Development of the Phenix Information System 2005] (Belgium), art 9 imposes the
drafting of a Royal Decree regarding both anonymisation guidelines and a
complaints procedure, but it has not been drafted yet.
65
Federal Law No. 262-FZ of 22 December 2008 on the Provision of Access to Information on
the Activities of Courts in the Russian Federation (Russia), art 15 para 3.
66
Kriminaalmenetluse seadustik [Code of Criminal Procedure] (Estonia) art 408.
41

which the last sentence now reads: The President of the Chamber may
authorise anonymity or grant it of his or her own motion.
67
Also the CJEU changed its rules of procedure. With regard to the
preliminary rulings proceedings art 104 of the former Rules of Procedure
stated explicitly that the original (hence non-anonymised) version of the
national judgment had to be communicated to the various stakeholders. In
the new Rules of Procedure, in force since 1 January 2013, a specific art (95),
titled Anonymity has been introduced. It reads:
68
69
1.
Where anonymity has been granted by the referring court or
tribunal, the Court shall respect that anonymity in the proceedings
pending before it.
2.
At the request of the referring court or tribunal, at the duly
reasoned request of a party to the main proceedings or of its own
motion, the Court may also, if it considers it necessary, render
anonymous one or more persons or entities concerned by the case.
In general, one may conclude that with a growing awareness of the risks of
data mining and the enactment of the EU General Data Protection
Regulation, the debate on easing anonymisation rules has silenced.
70
Open Data
At the global level the re-usability of public data has been recognised as a
stimulus for economic growth and governmental transparency. Soft law
instruments are gradually shaping a legal framework, like the G8 Open Data

67
Registry of the European Court of Human Rights, Rules of Court (14 November 2016)
<http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Rules_Court_ENG.pdf>.
68
Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice of the European Communities of 19 June 1991
[1991] OJ L 176/7, CELEX:31991Q0704(02).
69
Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice [2012] OJ C 337/1, CELEX:32012Q1106(01).
70
Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016
on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the
free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC [2016] OJ L 119/1,
CELEX:32016R0679.
42
Vol 24(2) 2016

Charter and, focussed on legal data, the Guiding principles of the Hague
Conference on Private International Law.
71
72
The more firm legal framework within the EU is governed by Directive

2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information (PSI directive) as
amended by Directive 2013/37/EU. For the re-usability of case law
documents this amendment, that had to be transposed into national
legislation by all member states on 18 July 2015, entails two important
changes. First, governmental institutions (judiciaries included) do not have a
choice anymore whether to make public documents available for re-use; they
now have an obligation, though without prejudice to for example, data
protection rules. The delicate balance between re-usability versus data
protection has been discussed by, inter alia, the European Data Protection
Supervisor and the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which
formulated purpose limitation as a leading principle:
73
74
75
The mere fact that personal data are publicly available for a specific
purpose does not mean that such personal data are open for re-use
for any other purpose.
76
One could argue very well that if court decisions are not rendered
anonymous before publishing them on the web (like in many common law
countries) and additional measures have been taken to protect the interests
77

71
Cabinet Office, UK Government, G8 Open Data Charter and Technical Annex (18 June
2013) <http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-data-charter/g8-opendata-charter-and-technical-annex>.
72
Permanent Bureau, Hague Conference on Private International Law, Accessing the

Content of Foreign Law and the Need for the Development of a Global Instrument in this
Area a Possible Way Ahead, Preliminary Document No 11 A (March 2009)
<http://www.hcch.net/upload/wop/genaff_pd11a2009e.pdf>.
73
[2003] OJ L 345/90, CELEX:32003L0098.
74
[2013] OJ L 175/1, CELEX:32013L0037.
75
European Data Protection Supervisor, Opinion on the 'Open-Data Package' of the

European Commission including a Proposal for a Directive amending Directive 2003/98/EC
on Re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI), a Communication on Open Data and
Commission Decision 2011/833/EU on the Reuse of Commission Documents [2012] OJ C
335, CELEX:52012XX1101(04).
76
Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, Open Data and Public Sector Iinformation
('PSI')
Reuse,
Opinion
06/2013
(5
June
2013)
<http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/documentation/opinionrecommendation/files/2013/wp207_en.pdf>.
77
See, eg, Apata, R v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWVA Civ 802.
43

of named litigantsfor example, by the use of the Robots Exclusion
Protocol purpose limitation might be a valid reason for not making these
documents available for reuse, notwithstanding the possible breach of data
protection rules by maintaining such databases in the first place. In any case,
purpose limitation should and cannot be used as an argument against
making available for reuse any public case law database that is already fully
anonymised.
78
The second important amendment of the PSI Directive regards the technical
usability of the data. The original text of art 5 para 1 read:
Public sector bodies shall make their documents available in any preexisting format or language, through electronic means where
possible and appropriate.
After the amendment it reads:
Public sector bodies shall make their documents available in any preexisting format or language, and, where possible and appropriate, in
open and machine-readable format together with their metadata.
Both the format and the metadata should, in so far as possible,
comply with formal open standards.
More specific guidelines are published by the European Commission,
recommending, inter alia, the highest possible level of granularity,
publication at a stable location, publishing in formats like XML, JSON and
RDF, using rich metadata (for example, Dublin Core), controlled
vocabularies and APIs as well as proper documentation. Apart from these
general instructions, equally applicable to all types of public data, guidance
for improving reusability of case law documents can be found in the Council
Conclusions on the European Case Law Identifier, which will be discussed in
Part 5 below.
79
There are substantial differences across Europe regarding the extent to which
case law repositories are actually available for reuse. In the Netherlands for
example, all published decisions have been available for unlicensed reuse in
XML-format, via FTP since 2004 and via a RESTful web service since 2013,
but in many other countries re-users are confined to screen scraping and in

78
According to this protocol a small text file (robots.txt) is placed on a webserver,

specifying which web crawlers are allowed to index which data. Although the
protocol is generally observed, it can be ignored easily.
79
European Commission, Guidelines on recommended standard licences, datasets and

charging for the reuse of documents [2014] OJ C 240/1, CELEX:52014XC0724(01).
44
Vol 24(2) 2016

some other even legal restrictions apply being at odds with the PSI
Directive.
An interesting court case on this topic can be found in Germany where
LexXpress GmbH, a legal publisher, wanted to have equal access to the XML
formatted judgments of the Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht),
as well as to the accompanying metadata, which were till then exclusively
sent to Juris GmbH, a company in which the state holds a majority stake.
These metadatalike head notes, summaries and referencesare written by
the staff of the Constitutional Court. While LexXpress held that, based on the
(by then unamended) PSI directive and the way it was transposed into
national German law, it was equally entitled to the information as Juris
GmbH; the defendant (the State) held that the metadata were copyright
protected. In its decision of 3 November 2011 the Administrative court in
Karlsruhe ruled for the defendant, but that decision was radically
overthrown by the Appellate Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof,
VGH) Baden-Wrttemberg. The VGH ruled that not only court decisions
themselves are free from copyright, but also the metadata concerned, since
they are produced by court staff. Hence, the exception for copyrighted
material, made in the national legislation implementing the PSI directive was
not applicable. Also, the argument of the Constitutional Court that the State
had a specific interest in an exclusive contract with Juris GmbH was waved
aside by the VGH. The final decision had to come from the Federal High
Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht, BVerwG). Because the
BVerwG also has an exclusive contract with Juris GmbH, a motion to recuse
was filed against all judges of the BVerwG, which was dismissed (an
unappealable decision of the BVerwG itself). Disappointingly from a legal
perspective a decision on the merits will not be rendered, since the case has
been withdrawn in 2015 after reaching a friendly settlement. The launch of
the website Court decisions on the internet (Rechtsprechung im Internet) on
which the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the other Supreme
80
81
82
83

80
Verwaltungsgericht Karlsruhe, 3 K 2289/09, 2 March 2011.
81
Verwaltungsgerichtshof Baden-Wrttemberg, 10 S 281/12, 7 May 2013.
82
(Bundesverwaltungsgericht, ECLI:DE:BVerwG:2014:290114B7C13.13.0, 29 January

2014).
83
Bundesministerium der Justiz und fr Verbraucherschutz, Rechtsprechung im Internet

<http://www.rechtsprechung-im-internet.de>.
45

Courts can be searched and downloaded seems to have played a major role
in reaching this settlement.
84
Identifiers and metadata
One of the reasons for the only moderate success of some of the initiatives
for improving access to EU related national case law was the lack of proper
identifiers and common metadata. To provide for standardisation the EU
Council of Ministers in December 2010 established the Council conclusions
on ECLI. The ECLI framework consists of five core components.
85
86
87
The first component is the identifier itself, which can be assigned to every
court decision rendered by a European or Member States court. The fixed
format of five elementsECLI:{country code}:{court code}:{year of
decision}:{unique code}makes this identifier easily recognised and read by
lawyers and computers alike, while at the same leaving room for flexibility
in national implementation.
Currently ECLI has been introduced by and made available in public case
law repositories ofthe CJEU, the European Court of Human Rights, the
Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO), all courts in the
Netherlands, Spain and Austria, and a growing number of courts in
Germany, France, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Finland and
Greece. In Romania, Italy, Cyprus, Belgium, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria,
Denmark and Croatia the implementation of ECLI is work in progress.
88
89

84
T Podolski, Juris: Lexxpress gegen BVerfG: Sieg ber mchtige Gegner, Legal Tribune
(online), 10 February 2015 <http://www.lto.de/persistent/a_id/16771/>.
85
See above n 28.
86
Council of the European Union, Council Conclusions Inviting the Introduction of the
European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and a Minimum Set of Uniform Metadata for Case Law
[2011] OJ C 127/1, CELEX:52011XG0429(01).
87
See also M van Opijnen, European Case Law Identifier: indispensable asset for legal
information retrieval in M A Biasiotti and S Faro (eds), From Information to Knowledge.
Online Access to Legal Information: Methodologies, Trends and Perspectives (IOS Press,
2011) 91.
88
The ECLI of the CJEU is available at the Courts website as well as on EUR-Lex.
89
M van Opijnen and A Ivantchev, Implementation of ECLI State of Play in A Rotolo

(ed), Legal Knowledge and Information Systems JURIX 2015: The Twenty-Eighth Annual
Conference, Braga, 10/11-12-2015 (IOS Press, 2015) 165.
46
Vol 24(2) 2016

The second component of the ECLI framework is a unified set of mandatory
and optional metadata, based on the Dublin Core metadata standard.
Thirdly, Member State implementation should be guided by a national ECLI
co-ordinator, which is, inter alia, responsible for documenting the national
technical specifications on the ECLI pages of the European e-justice portal,
the fourth component of the ECLI framework.
90
Finally, the Councils conclusions assign the Commission with the task to
develop the ECLI Search Engine on the European e-justice portal (ESEEEJP), giving access to possibly all European and national court decisions
having an ECLI. One of the advantages would be that one can discover easily
whether for example, summaries in other languages are available for a
specific judgment. The ESE-EEJP went live on 4 May 2016, and contains
nearly four million decisions from the CJEU, the EPO, Spain, the
Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Finland, Germany, France as well as
from the JuriFast database of the Association of Councils of State and
Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions of the European Union.
91
92
93
To even further improve case law accessibility at the European level, in

October 2015 Building on ECLI has started, a project with sixteen partners
from ten EU Member States. A first goal is to (further) implement ECLI in
Belgium, Croatia, Greece, Estonia, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and the
Netherlands, and to connect their case law repositories to the ESE-EEJP. A
second goal is to improve the accessibility of published case law, inter alia
within the ESE-EEJP, by creating computer readableand hence
searchablelegal references within judicial decisions. Thirdly, a 2.0 version
of the ECLI standard is to be developed, which should be aligned with other
evolving semantic web standards. A fourth objective is to have EU wide
policy guidelines on the publication of case law, specifically addressing the
issues of selection criteria, data protection and Open Data. Last but not least,
94

90
European Justice, European Case Law Identifier (4 May 2016) <https://ejustice.europa.eu/content_european_case_law_identifier_ecli-175-en.do>.
91
European
Justice,
ECLI
Search
Engine
(4
May
justice.europa.eu/content_ecli_search_engine-430-en.do>.
92
Association of the Councils of the State and Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions of

the
European
Union
i.n.pa.,
Home
Page
<http://www.acaeurope.eu/index.php/en/jurifast-en>.
93
J C van Haersolte, A Wheel Within a Wheel: the Association of the Councils of State
and Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions of the European Union (2010) 3 Review of
European Administrative Law 1, 131.
94
Building on ECLI, Building on ECLI <http://www.bo-ecli.eu>, the project is cofunded by the Justice Programme of the European Union (20142020).
2016)
<https://e-
47

the fifth objective is to promote the use of ECLI for interoperability in (legal)
IT applications and for case law citations in all legal and academic writings.
Conclusions
It is a positive development that the publication of court decisions is viewed

as an essential ingredient of modern judicial transparency. Although some
European countries are more advancedquantitatively or qualitatively
than others, the trend is irreversible. The gradual development of a legal
frameworkas outlined in this paperis encouraging for the (wide variety
of) end-users, although more common ground would be welcome.
Because transparency or re-usability should never take precedence over the
primary function of the judicial decisionoften dealing with the most
intimate and embarrassing details of the private lives of citizens data
protection should be a cornerstone of any legal framework. For that reason
publication on the internet can and should never be accepted as a means of
official public pronouncement; if anonymised, the scrutiny of justice would
be at stake, if not anonymised the interests of litigants would be violated.
And although the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
does not set alarm bells ringing yet, some of its recent judgments are
worrisome: will the Court really accept internet publication as a means of
public pronouncement, and if yes, how does that relate to art 8 of the
Convention? Will the Court persevere in its opinion that the responsibility for
openness of a governmental institution can be waived by the argument that
relevant information can nowadays be made public by anybody?
95
The amended PSI Directive is very much welcomed by re-users of case law
databases. Many improvements can be expected in the coming years,
although two issues require attention. First, also with respect to reuse data
protection should be the guiding principle, especially for those countries not
yet having a very strict regime regarding anonymisation of court decisions.
To have the best of both worlds, more drastic anonymisation should be
preferred over limitations of reuse.
A second issue regards the problem of information overload. Data scientists
and academics with a hard-core vision on judicial transparency make us
believe there is no problem with just making everything available. By doing

95
See, eg, P A Winn, Online Court Records: Balancing Judicial Accountability and
Privacy in an Age of Electronic Information (2004) 99 Washington Law Review 307; I
Currie, Problems of Privacy in Online Court Materials in G Peruginelli and M
Ragona (eds), Law via the Internet. Free Access, Quality of Information, Effectiveness of
Rights, Florence, 30/31-10-2008 (European Press Academic Publishing, 2008) 73.
48
Vol 24(2) 2016

soas experienced in many countries having such rigorous policiesthe
interests of average userslegal professionals looking for relevant cases and
interested citizens alikeare disregarded completely. Without any policies
assuring that the qualitative accessibility of the information holds pace with
the quantitative growth of the repositories the net balance will be negative.

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Court Decisions on the Internet:

Development of a Legal Framework in Europe

In most European countries with a civil law tradition, the dissemination of

Court decisions on the Internet

2.1 The Doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights

For the legitimacy of the judiciary it is of crucial importance that everybody

Many member States of the Council of Europe have a long-standing

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:1983:1208JUD000798477, 8

Journal of Law, Information and Science

Vol 24(2) 2016

Making decisions available in a publicly available register as a way of public

[T]he object pursued by Article 6 para. 1 ... namely, to ensure

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:1984:0222JUD000820978, 22

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:1997:1124JUD002060292, 24

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:1983:1208JUD000827378, 8

Court decisions on the Internet

The Biryukov v Russia decision of 2008 is consistent with previous

It should be stressed that while the European Court of Human Rights

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2001:0710JUD002892395, 10 July

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2008:0117JUD001481002, 17

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2011:0301JUD001592405, 1 March

Journal of Law, Information and Science

Vol 24(2) 2016

Publishing a judgment on the internet as a method of public pronouncement

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2013:1217JUD002068804, 17

S Martens, With Rechtspraak.nl the Judiciary is in a Better Position to Comply with

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2005:1110JUD005239199, 10

Court decisions on the Internet

Where it is decided that a person vested with public authority at

However, on appeal this decision was overthrown by the Grand Chamber:

If applied to art 6 as well, this decision would contradict all previous

Meanwhile, at the national level many Member States of the Council of

(European Court of Human Rights, ECLI:CE:ECHR:2003:0701JUD002917895, 1 July

Journal of Law, Information and Science

Vol 24(2) 2016

As established by art 44 para 3 of the European Convention judgments of the

The number of member states complying with this recommendation is rather

Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, Resolution Res(2002)58 On the publication

Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, On the publication and dissemination in the

Court decisions on the Internet

An even more explicit obligation to publish case law of European relevance

See Access to European Law (2016) EUR-Lex <http://eurlex.europa.eu>.

(European Court of Justice, ECLI:EU:C:1982:335, 6 October 1982).

[2007] OJ L 339/3 (Lugano Convention).

Journal of Law, Information and Science

Vol 24(2) 2016

A comparable obligation to send judicial decisions of legal interest to the

This Recommendation tries to give guidance on the question of which court

See JURE Jurisdiction, Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and

[2003] OJ L 1/1, CELEX: 32003R0001.

Davids and Thomassen, above n 15.

Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, The Selection, Processing,

Ibid introductory text to para II of app II.

Court decisions on the Internet

Positive criteria are to be applied to the decisions of lower courts. These

Ibid s 5 of para II of app II.

Ibid s 2-2 of para III of app II.

Gerichtsorganisationsgesetz 1896 [Organization of the Courts Act] (Austria) 27

Journal of Law, Information and Science

Vol 24(2) 2016

In some countries it is completely left to the judiciary to make a selection, in

[D]ecisions in which completely new arguments are brought

See Selectieregels voor de rechtspraak opgenomen in de externe gegevensbank voor de