Making Legal information accessible and useful- A case of

Kenya Law Presented by Njeri Githang’a

Senior Law Reporter

Presented at the Law Via the Internet Conference 2014,University of Cape Town, October 1, 2014

This presentation looks at the situation in National Council for Law Reporting (Kenya Law) in regard to making legal information accessible and useful , examines the mandate of Kenya Law in the context of its constitutional and legal obligations towards providing public legal information and shares some of the Kenya Law’s initiatives in the fulfillment of that mandate.

Abstract:

The National Council for Law Reporting ( Kenya Law) is a state corporation in the Judiciary of Kenya. It is established by the National Council for Law Reporting Act, Act No. 11 of 1994. The mandate of Kenya Law is: • To monitor and report on the development of jurisprudence through the

publication of the Kenya Law Reports and related publications;

• To revise, consolidate and publish the Laws of Kenya;

• To perform such other functions as may be conferred by statute.

About the National Council for Law Reporting (Kenya Law)

Vision “Accessible Public Legal Information towards an

Enlightened Society”

Mission “To Provide Universal Access to Kenya’s Public Legal

Information by Monitoring and Reporting on the Development of Jurisprudence for the Promotion of the

Rule of Law”

Corporate Slogan “Where Legal Information is Public Knowledge”

About the National Council for Law Reporting (Kenya Law)

.

• The National Council for Law Reporting ( Kenya Law) has established itself as one of the leading law reporting institutions and providers of public legal information.

• Kenya Law rose from obscurity since the establishment of a secretariat in 2002

to claim its place as a leading publisher of the Kenya Law Reports, the Laws of Kenya as well as a broad variety of other types of legal information.

• It is one of the few public institutions in Africa that have been established

exclusively to publish the official law reports of its country. • Kenya Law has won local and international awards on corporate productivity,

innovation and effective use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in public service delivery.

About the National Council for Law Reporting (Kenya Law)

Introduction

• Kenya Law being the agency through which Kenya’s robust, indigenous, patriotic and progressive jurisprudence is monitored and reported is said to be the hub of legal information.

• More often than not, when one conducts legal research on the Kenya Law’s website, one does so by inquiring into the body of existing legal knowledge as a basis for reaching an understanding and/or finding a solution to a legal, social, economic, cultural or political question with the ultimate purpose of progressing or advancing a civilized society.

• As such, public legal information should not only be accessible

but also understandable and useful.

Accessibility and usefulness

Accessibility • Accessibility is said to be the degree to which a product, device,

service, or environment is available to as many people as possible and can be viewed as the "ability to access" and benefit from some system or entity.

Usefulness • Usefulness on the other hand is the extent to which a product

(such as a device, service, or environment) can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.

Barriers to accessibility

Today, new and subtle barriers to access have emerged. These include

• the language in which the information is provided,

• the technical formats in which it is presented,

• the time when the information is available and the contextual

relevance of the information — the ease with which the citizen can

find the particular piece of information that is relevant to him or her.

• use of complex terminology that makes it difficult for the citizen to

understand and use the information- Legal information tends to be

packaged and presented in a manner that alienates even fairly well-

educated citizens.

• Even though Kiswahili is

• the most widely spoken language in East Africa and

• the new Constitution grants it national language status,

government information is almost exclusively in English.

• Where public information is provided online or in digital

formats, the problem of limited access is further compounded

by the fact that the information is in technical formats that do

not lend themselves to easy access.

Barriers to accessibility

The Constitution of Kenya 2010, Article 35 establishes the citizen’s right to access

public information as a constitutional right.

35. (1) Every citizen has the right of access to

a) information held by the State; and

(b) information held by another person and required for the exercise or protection of any

right or fundamental freedom.

(2) Every person has the right to the correction or deletion of untrue or misleading

information that affects the person.

(3) The State shall publish and publicise any important information affecting the

nation.

THE CONSTITUTION OF KENYA 2010 AND RELEVANT LAWS

Article 7 (1)of the Constitution of Kenya provides that the National

Language of Kenya is Kiswahili

In Article,7 (3) (b), the state is obligated to do the following;

(b)promote the development and use of indigenous languages,

Kenyan Sign language, Braille and other communication formats and

technologies accessible to persons with disabilities.

RELEVANT LAWS

Accessibility and usefulness

• With the Constitution of Kenya 2010, Kenya Law has an understanding of its mandate which is not merely a provider of public legal information but the people’s fountain of knowledge and understanding of the law for the promotion of the rule of law and the advancement of a civilized society.

• This sense of obligation is captured in its corporate slogan “Where Legal Information is Public Knowledge”.

• Kenya Law’s strategic approach has shifted from merely providing legal information to creative and innovative organization of data and information to generate and develop legal knowledge.

• Kenya Law’s products & services have been packaged to guarantee a good user experience.

Law Reporting Situation in Kenya

• Publishing is both on print and and online publishing

• Online publishing is on Kenya Laws main website

www.kenyalaw.org which contains cases collated from the

superior courts of record of Kenya (the Supreme Court, the

Court of Appeal, the High Court of Kenya and other courts and

tribunals established under the Laws of Kenya)

• Kenya Law recently upgraded its Case Law database that runs

on its website www.kenyalaw.org which meets the highest

standards of database design and quality.

Once upon a time in Kenya…2002

KENYA LAW WEBSITE 2014

Use of drop-down menus for quick and easy access to content.

Increase/decrease font size tabs on the top right corner for use

of persons with varying visual acuities.

Responsive Design – The website will adapt to any screen size

you display it on.

Comments on judicial opinions

Two scrolling bands on the Home Page for display of items of

great interest, new products, scholarly writings

Features of the Kenya Law Website

Case Search

• This is the service that enables the user to access the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of Kenyan case law from the superior courts of record dating from 1980 to date by a click of a button.

• end users are able to enjoy a friendly web 2.0. Compliant user interface with powerful built-in search module where they are able to perform google and advanced search and filtering of cases such as,

Full-text search, Boolean search, and be to able restrict search to metadata or the content of the document.

• Search results are paginated • Search terms in context are highlighted in search results • Search button and search options available on all user/front-end pages

Google Custom Case Search

Advanced Case Search

Display of the judicial opinions

• judicial opinions/documents are displayed along with metadata

• the database also enables publishing of the eventual case laws into both relational

database and XML formats

• the end user can download the judicial opinions and has the following other

options;

a. Option to print

b. Option to share individual document by email and on social media platforms

c. Option to export document to a variety of formats, including XML, current and

previous versions of MS Word, PDF

• The database provides uniform formatting of exported, shared or downloaded documents

including but not limited to optional display of metadata in exported document

Formats & Social Media

Case Summaries

• These are brief summaries of judicial opinions that are precedent

setting from the superior courts of record.

• Such judicial opinions are considered on the basis that they meet

the guidelines under the Kenya Law Editorial Policy and that they

advance Kenya’s indigenous jurisprudence.

• The summaries are compiled on a weekly basis as Case Updates

• The case updates cover substantive and procedural issues as well

as points of law of public interest.

Case Summaries

A case summary is very useful as it informs the reader at a glance of all the important matters raised by the case so that the reader can see whether the case is deserving of further attention for the purposes of the research in hand.

Pursuant to the constitutional obligation to ensure that the right to

access to legal information is guaranteed, Kenya Law in

collaboration with Languages Africa, commenced the exercise of

translating the case summaries of judicial opinions, from English to

Swahili, which is the national language as stipulated in the

Constitution.

A number of selected case summaries have now been translated to

Swahili and we are also in the process of translating cases on public

interest matters into Mwananchi friendly version.

language

• It allows the user to post comments with moderation by the

admin.

• It allows the user to share/post content to social media.

Interactivity of the case law database

Comments on Judicial Opinions

Legal Information from Other

Jurisdictions

(a) Cost:

The case search is provided free of charge on www.kenyalaw.org/caselaw

(a) Accessibility:

• The Case Law database conforms to the international standards for the accessibility of web

content by persons of all abilities as outlined in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

version 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

• It is based on an open and interoperable technology (XML), can be accessed using a variety

of devices and technology platforms and has features that make it easily accessible to

persons with visual disabilities.

Accessibility of the Case Law Database

• The front-end is optimized for access by a variety of media, including desktop

computers, tablets computers and mobile devices.

• The case law database is also integrated to a mobile application that is run on

Android. (Kenya Law mobile App)

• The database lends itself to easily be crawled by internet search engines

• The Case law database is updated on a daily basis.

Accessibility of the Case Law Database

• The “Kenya Law Weekly e-Newsletter” is an online publication featuring write-ups of

judicial opinions from the superior courts of record. Such judicial opinions are

considered on the basis that they meet the guidelines under the Kenya Law Editorial

Policy and that they advance Kenya’s indigenous jurisprudence. (Case Law updates)

• The Weekly e-Newsletter also contains excerpts of Gazette Notices from the Kenya

Gazette (both weekly and Special Issue editions). These are selected gazette notices

that touches on issues of public interest e.g. Public and State appointments,

revocation of land titles, Practice Directions issued by the Chief Justice, etc.

Kenya Law Weekly e-Newsletter

Kenya Law Weekly Newsletter

Laws of Kenya…once upon a time…2004

Laws of Kenya

Laws of Kenya Database

Point-in-Time Feature

Bills: Senate, National Assembly & County

Assembly

Cause Lists

A Schedule of cases due to be heard in the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme

Court and other varied stations

Kenya Gazette weekly publication containing government notices and other legal notices prepared by

Kenya’s Government Printer

Kenya Law Blog

Law Reform

• Judicial opinions are an important barometer for evaluating the constitutionality, propriety, effectiveness, redundancy, applicability and utility of statutory legislation.

• Judicial pronouncements relating to one or more aspects of constitutional and statutory law that are in need of reform are an important driver of the law reform process.

• As such, it is the duty of a law reporter, during the course of preparing case summaries, to identify such pronouncements and to bring them to the special attention of both the Attorney General and the Law Reform Commission.

Collection Reports

Collection Reports

Collection Reports

Collection Reports

Creative Commons and its association with Kenya Law

Creative Commons (CC) (www.creativecommons.org) is a non-profit organization

dedicated to expanding the range of creative works available for others to share

and build on legally.

The organization has released a number of information labels (called licences)

designed to enable the publishers and creators of other works to communicate

with clarity and simplicity what copyright restrictions, if any, apply to their work.

Kenya Law is an affiliate and partner of Creative Commons and a member of the

Creative Commons-Kenya team. Kenya Law embraces and champions the open

sharing of information, knowledge and creativity.

Conclusion

• Beyond merely providing access to the text of the primary sources of legal information such as the judgments of the courts and the Bills and Acts of Parliament, more needs to be done to ensure that the information is provided in a language and format that improve access to it as well as the ability of the citizen to understand the information.

• There is a need to start providing essential public information in the national language not just by translating it, but by originating future information in bilingual formats — Kiswahili and English.

Conclusion

• Where the decisions of the courts can be easily accessed and understood by the citizen, people are able to order their public and private affairs with some regularity. This would not be possible if the information is provided in a language or format they cannot understand.

• If this is true of court decisions, then it would apply with perhaps even greater measure to other species of public legal information such as the Bills and Acts of Parliament and regulations made under them.

The end

- THANK YOU!-