Paul Jacobson

There is a pretty exciting project underway at the moment to aggregate case law and legislation published by Southern African courts and legislatures.  The organisation running this project is called the Southern African Legal Information Institute:

The Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII) is a prototype system produced from data developed and published by the University of the Witswaterand Law School with assistance from the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII).

The system is based on data collected by Wits Law School Editing and preparation of material for publication is by Wits Law School. Further mark-up processing, database structure, search engine facilities, and some other aspects of technical infrastructure are provided by AustLII. The Southern African parts of the WorldLII Catalog are jointly prepared by Wits Law School and AustLII. The overall SAFLII facility is managed jointly by Wits Law School and AustLII

There is a growing body of case law on the site already and this collection is set to grow considerably.  In time I hope to count this as one of my most comprehensive resources of case law.  For the time being only certain South African courts publish their judgments online.  A fair amount of legislation is available on the Web.  The holy grail is a comprehensive, free and complete database of case law and legislation.

Tags: saflii, southern african legal information institute, case law, legislation