Canada – Article – Globe & Mail – Canada’s “legal data desert” — “We don’t have a complete, public record of court decisions. Here’s why that matters.”
An investigation by Robyn Doolittle, published this morning, looks at a quiet but serious issue in Canada’s justice system:
We don’t have a complete, public record of court decisions.
Here’s why that matters.
In Canada:
– judges decide what gets published
– courts voluntarily send decisions to CanLII
– some decisions go to commercial databases
– many never become easily accessible at all
There is no centralized, public system that guarantees full access.
CanLII does important, open-access work — and deserves credit for it.
But public legal data is still fragmented and not open for bulk access.
That creates two downstream problems.
First: AI becomes winner-takes-all.
Without bulk legal data, only a few actors can build serious legal AI tools. Less competition ? very expensive products ? limited access for legal aid orgs and solo practitioners — often the people who need these tools most.
Second (and deeper): you can’t evaluate justice without the full picture.
If we can’t see all decisions, we can’t tell whether similar cases are decided consistently.
Inconsistency doesn’t disappear — it just becomes invisible.
An investigation by Robyn Doolittle, published this morning, looks at a quiet but serious issue in Canada’s justice system:
We don’t have a complete, public record of court decisions.
Here’s why that matters.
In Canada:
– judges decide what gets published
– courts voluntarily send decisions to CanLII
– some decisions go to commercial databases
– many never become easily accessible at all
There is no centralized, public system that guarantees full access.
CanLII does important, open-access work — and deserves credit for it.
But public legal data is still fragmented and not open for bulk access.
That creates two downstream problems.
First: AI becomes winner-takes-all.
Without bulk legal data, only a few actors can build serious legal AI tools. Less competition ? very expensive products ? limited access for legal aid orgs and solo practitioners — often the people who need these tools most.
Second (and deeper): you can’t evaluate justice without the full picture.
If we can’t see all decisions, we can’t tell whether similar cases are decided consistently.
Inconsistency doesn’t disappear — it just becomes invisible.
Other countries have moved differently (France, the UK, the U.S.).
– with Free Law Project Michael Lissner in the US; hashtag#Judilibre Édouard Rottier ; hashtag#CambridgeLegalCorpus Felix Steffek
Canada is increasingly an outlier
This isn’t just a tech issue.
It’s about transparency, accountability, and the rule of law in a digital age.
This raises a bigger question:
Can we really talk about access to justice if we can’t fully see how justice is applied?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-secret-canada-records-judge-decisions-online/?utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links&login=true