Linking legal sources in a shared web environment

Abstract

The functionality of the Portal to legal literature, which is under development at ITTIG, is described, focusing on a linking mechanism created to allow navigation between statutory rules, judicial cases and legal literature pieces of work. Reference is made to previous works carried out by Italian institutions for the identification of legislation and case law resources through URN identifiers. The design of a URN for legal literature material is planned to ensure cross-access to legal sources on the basis of user surveys carried out for the purpose of better customize the Portal's services. The main features of the proposed URN for legal literature material are described as well as tools developed for the Portal based on an OpenURL resolver mechanism in order for users to start from the examination of a law (legislation) to its interpretation (legal literature) and further to analyse the enforcement of that law in judicial cases (case law).