HC judges can now log on for legal info online
Bombay high court judges are all set to have an e-library at their fingertips.
With 1.3 lakh books and journals, the HC judges library in the city may not boast of as many books as, say the Harvard law library which has over 17 lakh titles, but on Monday Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar will inaugurate the first e-law library high court website.
The digital initiative will offer not only judges, but also lawyers, law students and litigants free access to national and international legal information on their computer screens. Almost the entire catalogue of books and journals available at the judges library can be viewed online. But borrowing a book will continue to be according to rules and require the physical presence of the borrower.
The HC library has rare legal books, including a hardbound copy of the Indian Constitution, complete with all the signatures. For a research scholar, it is a treasure trove with volumes dating back to 1860 of unrepealed laws of the Legislative Council of India, the Upanishad translated by F Max Muller and Manusmruti dating back to 1922.
Justice D Y Chandrachud, who has been in charge of the project, says the effort is to eventually link the site to all other international courts to create a legal information highway. The high court chief librarian Uma Narayan and her team have been working for several months to put together the site that has links not only to catalogue and gazette notification index, but also to a large number of central enactments with their full text from a free website called Commonlii. The HC Judges Act is there for anyone to read and young lawyers also have help from a procedural rules page.
The site will have links to various constitutions around the world, free links to international legal databases and links to national as well as foreign courts, including the US supreme court and House of Lord judgments or the International Court of Justice. It will also have the latest issues of the Harvard Law Review and other foreign legal journal links, including to the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law. According to sources, work is on to provide the civil and criminal manual online.