Legal information in an international perspective : issues, current developments

Dostęp do publikacji jest możliwy w Archiwum UJ

The subject of this doctoral dissertation is legal information viewed as a field of knowledge, both academic and professional. The research does not focus on information as it is commonly understood - i.e. as either a message (information as a resource) or as an information act (an act of conveying information about the law). Instead, it investigates a wide range of theoretical and practical issues concerning the creation of information related to legal matters and the field of law, as well as the properties of such information - how it is managed, how it is sought, and finally how it is received by the user. In order to achieve the research goals, an LIS perspective has been adopted. However, the subject of this research goes beyond the traditional parameters of an LIS approach; to make headway in this study, it was found to be necessary to refer to theories and frameworks that have been developed within the field of legal studies itself. An attempt to transpose the selected legal conceptual categories into the context of the author’s own research has been ventured; hence, all the concepts derived from legal science have been aligned with terminological/conceptual paradigms established in the LIS research area. When no such conceptual categories were available or there has been no cognizance taken of such categories among legal scholars, the author has endeavored to provide independently devised proposals and developed these further in this dissertation. A conceptualization that might be deemed of greatest significance in this research is the development of the notion of the 'thematic structure' of legal information (as a body of knowledge) and the recognition - within this structure - of an area that may be termed "an information scientist competence zone". The zone refers to specific subject areas that can be investigated and described in the field of LIS, from an information scientist's perspective. The key findings of the research were made on the basis of a foreign literature review. Thus, the conceptual frameworks, embedded in the context of foreign (mainly Anglo-American common law) legal systems, were also analyzed for their potential compatibility with and relevance to the specific conditions and requirements of the institutional structures, justice systems, and other sources and repositories of legal information which are typical for Poland, and for other countries within continental Europe.