Openlaw

Openlaw is a legal-research and public-interest litigation project associated with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Its central idea is that the development of legal arguments can be opened to public review in much the same way that software source code is made available for inspection, modification, and redistribution. Rather than treating the preparation of a brief as a wholly private activity carried out inside a law firm, Openlaw invites lawyers, academics, students, technologists, and other interested participants to examine arguments, identify weaknesses, suggest revisions, and contribute supporting research. The project emerged in 1998 after online publisher Eldritch Press sought a legal challenge to changes in United States copyright law. Eldritch Press republished books whose copyrights had expired, but the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended the relevant copyright term from 50 to 70 years after an author's death. Lawrence Lessig, then a Harvard Law School faculty member, was asked to help mount a challenge. He used an online forum to involve law students at Harvard and elsewhere in developing the case, creating the model that became Openlaw. Openlaw's working method deliberately borrowed from free and open-source software. Conventional legal practice generally keeps the research, drafting, debate, and revision that produce a court filing confidential until the final document is submitted. Openlaw instead treated those intermediate materials as a form of legal source code and released them under a copyleft-oriented framework. Participants could scrutinize the reasoning, propose amendments, develop incomplete sections, and reuse portions of the work in related public-interest advocacy. The first and best-known matter associated with the project was the challenge that became Eldred v. Ashcroft. The case attracted contributions from roughly 50 legal scholars and proceeded through the federal court system to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rejected the challenge in 2003, but the litigation demonstrated both the possibilities and limitations of collaborative legal production. Openly developed arguments could attract expertise and public attention, while the public nature of the process meant that litigators could not preserve surprise and could not easily handle matters requiring confidentiality. Openlaw was especially suited to questions with a broad public-interest dimension, including copyright, Internet regulation, encryption, hacking, and civil liberties. Its work also circulated beyond the cases in which it originated: advocacy organizations and members of the public used parts of its reasoning in communications with legislators, informational material, and other forms of political or legal advocacy. The project is therefore best understood not as a conventional law firm or consumer-facing legal brand, but as an experiment in participatory legal research, open litigation strategy, and the application of free-software principles to law.

Openlaw originated in the late 1990s as an experiment in applying open-source collaboration to legal advocacy. In 1998, Harvard Law School faculty member Lawrence Lessig was approached by Eldritch Press, an online publisher that republished works whose copyright had expired. The publisher faced a reduced supply of such material after the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended the United States copyright term from 50 to 70 years after an author's death. Lessig agreed to help explore a legal challenge and invited law students at Harvard and elsewhere to participate through an online forum. That forum became the foundation for Openlaw. The project challenged the conventional division between a law firm's private working process and its public court filings. In ordinary litigation, legal research, strategic discussions, drafts, and revisions are generally kept confidential, while only the completed arguments are submitted to the court. Openlaw made the development process itself more public. It treated legal reasoning as analogous to software source code: contributors could inspect the material, identify weaknesses, propose changes, improve incomplete sections, and reuse portions of the resulting work under a copyleft-oriented approach. The project was connected with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, whose research community focused on issues including cyberspace, copyright, encryption, hacking, and related questions of technology law. Its intellectual environment also had links to the free-software movement and organizations concerned with digital rights. Approximately 50 legal scholars participated in work connected with the Eldritch challenge. After Lawrence Lessig moved to Stanford Law School, Wendy Seltzer took over Openlaw's leadership. The litigation developed through the Openlaw process became Eldred v. Ashcroft. Although the case was regarded by some as unlikely to succeed, the collaborative project helped prepare arguments that carried the challenge through the federal courts and to the Supreme Court. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled against the challenge, leaving the copyright-term extension in place. The result did not establish Openlaw as a winning litigation formula, but it provided a prominent demonstration of how distributed legal research could support a complex constitutional and copyright dispute. Openlaw's method had clear advantages and trade-offs. Public participation could bring in specialized knowledge, expose mistakes, and make legal materials available to people who were not part of the original litigation team. Advocacy groups and individual citizens could reuse pieces of the work in letters to Congress, flyers, and other public communications. At the same time, arguments developed openly could not provide the element of surprise available to conventional litigators. The approach was also poorly suited to disputes involving confidential facts, privileged communications, trade secrets, or litigation strategy that needed to remain private. The project's significance lies primarily in its method rather than in a conventional commercial product portfolio. Openlaw proposed that selected legal questions—particularly those involving public policy, civil liberties, technology, and copyright—could benefit from transparent, networked participation. It is therefore best categorized as an open legal-research and public-interest advocacy initiative rather than as a traditional law firm, publisher, or software company. The available reference material does not establish a current operating structure, a commercial parent, or a definitive present-day activity status.

• 2003

  Supreme Court rejects the Eldred copyright challenge

  [1]Openlawen.wikipedia.org

  Eldred v. Ashcroft, the project's principal early case, reached the United States Supreme Court, which ruled against the challenge to the extended copyright term.

• 1998

  Openlaw emerges from an online copyright-law forum

  [1]Openlawen.wikipedia.org

  Lawrence Lessig began involving law students and other contributors through an online forum to develop a challenge to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. The collaborative forum evolved into Openlaw.

• 1998

  Openlaw adopts an open-source model for legal arguments

  [1]Openlawen.wikipedia.org

  The project made the preparation of legal arguments more public and modeled its review and revision process on free and open-source software development.

Openlaw positioned itself as an open-source alternative to closed legal drafting. Its value proposition was collaborative scrutiny: exposing legal reasoning to a broad community could reveal errors, add expertise, and make arguments reusable by other advocates. The model was most appropriate for public-interest disputes where transparency and participation outweighed the tactical advantages of secrecy.

• Legal research · 1998

  Open legal arguments

  Openlaw's central output was a body of legal reasoning developed through public participation. Contributors could review arguments, locate weaknesses, propose revisions, and expand incomplete sections. The materials were intended to be useful both in litigation and in broader public-interest advocacy.

• Public-interest litigation · 1998

  Eldred v. Ashcroft litigation materials

  The best-documented body of work associated with Openlaw concerned the challenge to the United States copyright-term extension law. The case drew on contributions from legal scholars and advanced through the court system to the Supreme Court, which rejected the challenge in 2003.

• 1998Eldritch Press copyright challenge

  United States · Online international audience

  Openlaw coordinated public development of arguments challenging the extension of copyright terms that affected Eldritch Press's ability to republish public-domain books.

  Outcome. The challenge became Eldred v. Ashcroft and was rejected by the United States Supreme Court in 2003. The arguments and research also circulated for use in public advocacy.

  Source

• 2003

  Continue public-interest legal advocacy after the Eldred rulingOther

  Background

  The Supreme Court rejected the principal copyright challenge associated with Openlaw.

  Action taken

  Openlaw's arguments and research continued to be available for reuse by citizens' rights groups and members of the public in communications and advocacy materials.

  Aftermath

  The litigation itself did not overturn the copyright extension, but the project demonstrated that openly developed legal analysis could have uses beyond the original court case.

  Source

• 1998

  Use an open-source process for legal draftingStrategy

  Background

  The project was created in response to a copyright challenge and sought a way to broaden the expertise involved in preparing legal arguments.

  Action taken

  Openlaw exposed the development of arguments to online participants and used a copyleft-oriented model that allowed review, revision, and reuse.

  Aftermath

  The approach attracted legal scholars and public contributors and produced materials used in the Eldred litigation and wider advocacy, but its public nature limited confidentiality and tactical surprise.

  Source

1. 1Openlawen.wikipedia.org
2. 2Openlaw projectopenlaw.fr