Digitization of court decisions

Legal information (법률정보/法律情報) may be divided into statutes, cases and legal literature.

Historically, statutes have been relatively easily accessed by the general public as they were published in the form of codes, but access to case law has been relatively limited owing to its restricted availability at law libraries. Even in civil law countries which are not fully dependent on case law, databases of court decisions were developed early on because of their standardized data formats, the ease of collection, high utilization value and broad scope of application.

Therefore, court decisions were compiled into databases early on in Korea like in the United States, Japan and other advanced countries.

Key words
legal information, court decision, digitization, database, individual efforts

History
In Korea, the judiciary branch sponsored the development of a case law database (판례 데이터베이스) from the beginning, unlike in other countries.

Necessity of Case Law DB
There was a unique background story in Korea. The Supreme Court started its precedent database in 1983 but its progress was almost minimal. Some judges used their individually-developed search programs while compiling precedents using their own personal computers. From 1990, when PCs were provided to all judges, they could search precedent cases using their sentencing date, case name and other limited conditions using inter-court networks in Seoul. In the beginning, the case law database and collection of case summaries were inconvenient and slow, and their printout was of low quality compared to paper-based information.

In the mid 1990s, when the Court Library had the initiative improving the database or search engine and deploying the local area network (LAN) system for the judiciary, the legal database began to be used extensively not only by judges but also by laymen. The Supreme Court website and database of precedents have acquired a unique position even these days as far as case law searching is concerned because they provide better contents and offer greater convenience than any other commercial databases available in those days.

Individual Efforts
The reasons why the case law search program that was developed by individual judges for their own use became such a popular legal information database were probably as follows:

First, the pure motives of the judges who developed case law search programs out of personal need and curiosity to help or please their colleagues were steadily inherited by later developers without becoming commercial ventures. They could induce voluntary participation by scholars while securing copyright approval from the authors of legal articles or writings to include them in the database together with abstracts or summaries written by the authors for the nominal reward of sharing LX DVD copies with them.

Second, the programs had thoroughly user-oriented functions so that novice computer users could use them easily and they were constantly updated or upgraded to improve such functions. In 1996, as the government elected the judiciary branch broadband network service as a pilot project, the Supreme Court case law database could be easily searched free of charge wherever the Internet service was available.

Third, unquestionably such a valuable result could only be achieved step by step thanks to the dedicated efforts of the numerous people involved in the project. In the beginning, court decisions and additional information - such as their summaries - had to be processed and entered into the database manually based on the court gazette, the judiciary branch’s official collection of court decisions. In 1998, following the foreign exchange crisis, many young people who were hired under a government self-help employment program entered an enormous volume of law data without any serious errors as they voluntarily learned hard-to-understand legal terms and Chinese characters. Later, as the court ruling gazette was published using DTP at the inception, the edited files of the gazette could be entered intact into the database. The Ministry of Government Legislation helped the Court DB to contain not only current but also old statutes. Furthermore, users were henceforth able to search reference decisions, lower court precedents and decisions following precedent cases by providing direct links to them.

Finally, the programs offered highly commendable technical features, including FoxPro techniques that enabled speedy viewing of searched data during an ongoing search operation, hyperlink functions that interconnected provisions or concepts of statutes, and easy upgrading of new additional data.

LawWorld
Legal Information Databases of the Court Library allows users to access legal information anywhere and at anytime using an Internet enabled computer. Information on judicial decisions, acts and subordinate statutes, legal publications, regulations, established rules, and precedents are organically integrated for use in an array of applications including trials, research, the resolution of disputes, and education.

Bubgoul (LX DVD) Program
Since 1996, "Legal Information System" database has been established with digital archives of court decisions, legal publications - for which the permission to reproduce has been granted - and judicial publications. In 2002, the new standard format recommended for government agencies was adopted by converting all existing data in text format to XML format. Thus XML format is used for all future entries - including publications, and case data - into the LawWorld (Legal Information Databases) and the Bubgoul ( LX·DVD ) database.

Bubgoul LX is a database program developed independently by the Supreme Court in 1997 for the purpose of providing practical legal information to legal professionals, scholars, and members of the general public who, because of individual limitations, would otherwise not have access to the LawWorld constructed by the Judicial Branch.

In accordance with the new long-term development plan and commensurate with construction of the Digital Library, the Supreme Court Library has converted text format data into XML format, upgraded the LawWorld into a web-based system in 2002, and developed an advanced and more convenient version of Bubgoul DVD that enables XML format data to be viewed in a personal PC environment.

Koreans' favorite LX DB
The current LX DB includes richer contents and better organized data than any other law database at home or abroad.

First, it includes such court decisions as the summaries and full text of key Supreme Court decisions published from 1948 onwards; the summaries and full text of Constitutional Court decisions published since 1989; the full text of decisions made by the Seoul Appellate and Seoul District Court, and other lower courts since 1948. Second, it includes such statute-related information as the current Republic of Korea statutes downloaded from the websites of the government departments or the Korea Legislation Research Institute (KLRI), Supreme Court rules and regulations, and historical information on statutes enacted or amended since 1995. Lastly, it contains extensive bibliographic information with which users can easily retrieve the full text of theses published since 1990 and related data files provided by the authors among those published by court judges, such as the Collections of the Judiciary Journal and Supreme Court Precedent Interpretation, in addition to the index data of legal writings or articles by Korean, Japanese, American and European lawyers held by the Court Library.

It also employs simple multi-stage search menus. While reading decisions obtained by a case search, users can also view related provisions, references or subsequent cases or literature at the same time. Users can search information using such conditions as sentencing date, case name and number, law provisions, and key words. Users can also search for information using arbitrary words selected from a text based on data extracted through primary findings. They can also find court decisions related to law provisions while searching statutes. It also features a systematic search structure that enables easy viewing of both the relevant law provisions and cases, and a literature search simultaneously. In addition, it provides other functions that enable users to store their data separately.