On Tuesday, September 20, CILC together with Mr. Marc van Opijnen, Advisor on Legal Informatics at the Netherlands Council for the Judiciary, paid a visit to Macedonia to speak about the various ways to build and maintain a functional open-access case-law database containing domestic Macedonian and international judgments.
Installing such an integrated database would considerably improve access to case law for legal professionals and civilians in Macedonia. This, in turn, would benefit Macedonian judicial practice by making it more uniform, consistent and predictable.
At the meeting representatives of the Macedonian Ministry of Justice, Judges and Justices of various Macedonian Courts, and other Macedonian legal professionals were addressed by the Dutch expert involved, who highlighted and explained the various ways for the organizational framing of an integrated case-law database. In his presentation Mr. Van Opijnen focused on the overall governance structure regarding the responsibilities and the day-to-day work on a case-law database, the necessary legal framework, the selection criteria for publishing case law, the identification of judgments, and the requirements for ensuring the accessibility and searchability of such a database.
This meeting was a first step towards building an integrated Macedonian case-law database. A follow-up meeting will be conducted shortly by the Macedonian project partner, the Academy for Judges and Public Prosecutors. The follow-up will focus on the first decisions on the overall responsibility of the system, the governance model and the division of work.