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Legal Tools

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Legal Tools Database is part of the global commons.
Lexsitus provides free access to, inter alia, the Elements Digest and the Means of Proof Digest.

Overview

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The term 'Legal Tools' refers to online legal-information services developed by the Legal Tools Project since 2006, primarily with support from the European Union.[1] The main services are the Legal Tools Database ('LTD'),[2] the Legal Tools Website,[3] the Case Matrix,[4] and two Digests in Lexsitus.[5] The services are designed, curated and maintained by lawyers, under the co-ordination of the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP).[6] The anthology Active Complementarity: Legal Information Transfer provides comprehensive information about the Legal Tools Project and its open access value-base.[7]

The Legal Tools Database (LTD):

The Legal Tools Database is the leading online database on international criminal law with more than 440,000 documents. It provides legal practitioners, researchers, students and the general public with open access to all relevant legal sources in international criminal law, including information on the core international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression) and the case-related sources of all the international criminal jurisdictions. Being a tool of computer-assisted legal research, the LTD provides access to all relevant case law, legislation (statutes and treaties), preparatory works as well as academic writings.[8] All resources are stored under persistent URLs (so-called PURLs).[9] As a consequence, courts, publishers (for example, the Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher (TOAEP)) and other online services (such as Lexsitus[10] and the CMN Knowledge Hub)[11] hyperlink to the LTD-PURLs. The International Criminal Court, Kosovo Specialist Chambers and others link their main public decisions to the LTD. For example, the trial judgement in the case of Germain Katanga included hyperlinks to 538 legal sources in the LTD.[12] The LTD has seen more than 50 million annual hits and has as such made an important contribution towards increased awareness of international criminal law since 2006.[13] The LTD won the 2023 Jus Gentium Research Award by the American Society of International Law.[14]

The Case Matrix and Digests in Lexsitus:

The Case Matrix is another service of the Legal Tools Project. It is a software that provides a matrix of the legal requirements of international crimes and modes of liability, on the one hand, and potential evidence or evidence, on the other. It has two digests of international case law quotations implemented at the level of elements of crime,[15] which are now accessed through the Lexsitus service where they are continuously updated.[16] There are online versions in English,[17] Arabic[18] and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.[19] The creators of the Case Matrix, Morten Bergsmo and Ralph Hecksteden,[20] won the 2008 Dieter Meurer Prize for Legal Informatics for its innovative qualities.[21] The Case Matrix has motivated and informed the development of software such as I-DOC which has become a successor service.[22] The Case Matrix application also inspired the name of the 'Case Matrix Network' which is the department of the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) that is responsible for knowledge transfer and capacity development activities.[23]

Legal Tools Project and Co-ordination:

The Legal Tools Project ('LTP') has led the development of the Legal Tools since their start in 2003. Morten Bergsmo founded the Project[24] when he served as the Senior Legal Adviser of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2002-2005),[25] and directs the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP). Devasheesh Bais is the Deputy Co-ordinator of the LTD and Antonio Angotti is the Co-ordinator of Lexsitus. Ralph Hecksteden was the original technical developer of the LTD and the Case Matrix since 2005, while the current version of the LTD and Lexsitus have been technically developed by Saurabh Sachan (Mithya Labs).[26] The Project is supported by academic institutions and non-governmental organizations from all continents,[27] as well as by more than 40 CMN Fellows offered pro bono to the Project by the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP).[28] The European Union and Finland have been the main donors to the Legal Tools Project.[29] The institutional partners in the project have received support from other donors, such as Norway.[30]

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As of 19 September 2026, the Legal Tools Database contained more than 440,000 documents.[31] The documents can be accessed in a tree-structure, where they are organized in nine main collections.[32] Each collection has multiple sub-collections, and responsibility to update the collections is assigned to partners or CMN Fellows according to a detailed table of responsibilities.[33] These are the nine main collections of documents in the Legal Tools Database:

  • International Criminal Court Documents: Basic legal documents, public Court records, Assembly of States Parties documents, Trust Fund for Victims documents, and the ICC preparatory works and Statute amendments (that include more than 9,000 documents related to the negotiation of the ICC Statute, Rules of Procedure and Evidence, and Elements of Crime document, as well as documents related to amendments to the ICC Statute).[34]
  • Other International(ised) Criminal Jurisdictions: It contains public documents, such as daily court filings and basic legal texts, from international and internationalised criminal courts and tribunals other than the ICC such as the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), Special Panels for Serious Crimes in East Timor, Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and its Residual Mechanism, Iraqi High Tribunal, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) and the Special Criminal Court for the Central African Republic.[35]
  • International Legal Instruments: Treaties collection of the LTD containing key treaties arranged by five topic-wise collections: Public International Law, International Criminal Law, International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, and International Environmental Law.[36]
  • Human Rights Law Decisions and Documents: Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights and African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, and documents of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the UN human rights system.[37]
  • Other International Law Decisions and Documents: Documents of the International Court of Justice, Permanent Court of International Justice, International Law Commission, UN General Assembly and UN Security Council, and other UN and regional bodies.[38]
  • National Criminal Jurisdictions: Organised by individual country collections, it contains basic documents on the domestic legal system, criminal laws and procedures, and national implementing legislation and cases concerning core international crimes from jurisdictions around the world.[39]
  • Publications: Provides access to a wide range of scholarly and institutional publications supporting research in international criminal law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law.[40]
  • United Nations War Crimes Commission: It hosts the archival records of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, covering the period from 1943 to 1949. The Collection includes historical documents relating to the investigation and prosecution of war crimes in the aftermath of World War II.[41]
  • International(ised) Fact-Finding Mandates: It contains documents produced by international and internationalised fact-finding missions established to examine atrocity crimes such as reports, findings, and related materials issued under a wide range of fact-finding and investigative mandates.[42]

References

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  1. ↑ "ICC Legal Tools". www.legal-tools.org. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
  2. ↑ Available at https://www.legal-tools.org/en/search/.
  3. ↑ It is this site with pages: https://www.legal-tools.org/.
  4. ↑ "ICC Case Matrix: Case Matrix Network". www.casematrixnetwork.org. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
  5. ↑ Lexsitus is available at https://cilrap-lexsitus.org/en.
  6. ↑ See https://www.cilrap.org/purpose.
  7. ↑ Morten Bergsmo (editor), Active Complementarity: Legal Information Transfer, Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, Oslo, 2011, 572 pp. (available at http://www.toaep.org/ps-pdf/8-bergsmo ).
  8. ↑ What are the ICC Legal Tools?
  9. ↑ See https://www.legal-tools.org/purl/.
  10. ↑ "Lexsitus". cilrap-lexsitus.org. Retrieved 2024-10-08.
  11. ↑ See https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/cmn-knowledge-hub/.
  12. ↑ The Katanga trial judgment is available at http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/f74b4f/.
  13. ↑ See the statement by Mr. Devasheesh Bais in https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251201-lexsitus, 1 December 2025.
  14. ↑ See the note in the lower-right corner of https://www.legal-tools.org/.
  15. ↑ See https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/icc-case-matrix/.
  16. ↑ See https://cilrap-lexsitus.org/elements-crime-digest and https://cilrap-lexsitus.org/means-proof-digest.
  17. ↑ There is free access at https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/icc-case-matrix/online-icc-case-matrix/.
  18. ↑ There is free access at https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/icc-case-matrix/online-arabic-icc-case-matrix/.
  19. ↑ Free access is provided at https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/icc-case-matrix/online-bcs-icc-case-matrix/.
  20. ↑ For background information, see https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/icc-case-matrix/developers/.
  21. ↑ See the press released linked to at the bottom of https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/icc-case-matrix/. See also https://www.legal-tools.org/en/what-are-the-icc-legal-tools/.
  22. ↑ See https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/cmn-knowledge-hub/i-doc/.
  23. ↑ See https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/activities/.
  24. ↑ See https://www.legal-tools.org/en/status-of-work-on-the-tools/background/.
  25. ↑ See https://www.cilrap.org/bergsmo/.
  26. ↑ See https://www.cilrap.org/legal-informatics-section/.
  27. ↑ See https://www.legal-tools.org/en/status-of-work-on-the-tools/co-operation-agreements/.
  28. ↑ See https://www.casematrixnetwork.org/about-us/cmn-fellows/.
  29. ↑ The contributions of the European Union are acknowledged on the Legal Tools Website (https://www.legal-tools.org/en/browse/ and subsequent pages) and in the Legal Tools Database itself (https://www.legal-tools.org/en/search/).
  30. ↑ See https://www.legal-tools.org/en/status-of-work-on-the-tools/.
  31. ↑ See https://www.legal-tools.org/en/search/.
  32. ↑ See https://www.legal-tools.org/en/browse/.
  33. ↑ See https://www.legal-tools.org/en/status-of-work-on-the-tools/table-of-responsibilities/.
  34. ↑ See the overview of the LTD International Criminal Court Documents Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-22/.
  35. ↑ See the overview of the LTD Other International(ised) Criminal Jurisdictions Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-23/.
  36. ↑ See the overview of the LTD International Legal Instruments Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-24).
  37. ↑ See the overview of the LTD Human Rights Law Decisions and Documents Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-25.
  38. ↑ See the overview of the LTD Other International Law Decisions and Documents Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-26.
  39. ↑ See the overview of the LTD National Criminal Jurisdictions Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-27/.
  40. ↑ See the overview of the LTD Publications Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-28.
  41. ↑ See the overview of the LTD United Nations War Crimes Commission Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-29.
  42. ↑ See the overview of the LTD International(ised) Fact-Finding Mandates Collection at https://www.cilrap.org/cilrap-film/251219-ltd-30.
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