 The home page of LII on 03/03/2010 | |
Type of site | Nonprofit,Open Access toUS Law |
|---|---|
| Available in | English, some French[1] |
| Owner | Cornell Law School |
| Created by | Peter Martin andTom Bruce |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | January 1, 1992; 33 years ago (1992-01-01) |
| Current status | Available |
TheLegal Information Institute (LII) is anon-profit public service ofCornell Law School that provides no-cost access to currentAmerican andinternationallegal research sources online. Founded in 1992 byPeter Martin andTom Bruce,[2][3] LII was the first law site developed on the internet.[4] LII electronically publishes on the Web theU.S. Code,U.S. Supreme Courtopinions,Uniform Commercial Code, the USCode of Federal Regulations, several Federal Rules,[5] and a variety of otherAmericanprimary law materials.[6] LII also provides access to othernational andinternational sources, such astreaties andUnited Nations materials.[7] According to its website, the LII serves over 40 millionunique visitors per year.[8]
Since its inception, the Legal Information Institute has inspired others around the world to develop namesake operations.[6] These services are part of theFree Access to Law Movement.
LII was established in 1992 at Cornell Law School byPeter Martin andTom Bruce with a $250,000 multi-year startup grant from the National Center for Automated Information Research.[9] The LII was originally based onGopher and provided access toUnited States Supreme Court decisions and theUS Code.[2] Its original mission included the intent to "carry out applied research on the use of digital information technology in the distribution of legal information,...[and t]o make law more accessible."[9]In the early years of LII, Bruce developedCello the firstweb browser forMicrosoft Windows.[10][11] Cello was released on 8 June 1993.[12] In 1994 LII moved fromGopher to theWeb.[2] Since 2007 theIRS has distributed its IRS Tax Products DVD[13] with LII's version of26 USC (Internal Revenue Code).[14]
LII has an extensive collection of law from theSupreme Court of the United States.[15] It hosts all Supreme Court decisions since 1990 and over 600 historic Supreme Court pre-1992 decisions in web form (by party name,by authoring justice, andby topic).[16]
TheLII Supreme Court Bulletin is LII's free Supreme Court email-based subscriber and web-based publication service.[17] The Bulletin provides subscribers with two distinct services.[18] The first is a notification service. LII Bulletin emails subscribers with timely notification of when the US Supreme Court has handed down a decision.[19] It also provides subscribers links to the full opinions of those cases on the LII site.[19]
The second service of LII Bulletin is a preview and analysis service for upcoming Supreme Court cases. Subscribers to the Bulletin receive legal analysis of upcoming Supreme Court cases with the intention of providing sophisticated yet accessible previews of the cases.[18] LII selectively recruits second- and third-year students of theCornell Law School to comprise the LII Bulletin editorial board.[18] The Bulletin editorial board is responsible for every aspect of the journal's management, from selecting decisions for commentary to researching, writing, editing, and producing the journal content in HTML.[20]
LII publishes theWex Legal Dictionary/Encyclopedia.[21] It is a freely available legal reference, but editing is restricted. Once vetted, and subject to approval, qualified legal experts are allowed to post and edit entries on legal topics within Wex.[22] Wex has since 2020 been continuously edited and supplemented by the Wex Definitions Team, a group of supervised Cornell Law student editors.[23]
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