Law.gov – America’s Operating System – Open Source
http://public.resource.org/law.gov/index.html

Law.Gov is an idea, an idea that the primary legal materials of the United States should be readily available to all, and that governmental institutions should make these materials available in bulk as distributed, authenticated, well-formatted data. To make this idea a reality, a series of workshops were held throughout the country, resulting in a consensus on 10 core principles. The primary legal materials of the United States are the raw materials of our democracy. They should be made more broadly available to enable an informed citizenry. Primary legal materials include documents of primary authority issued by governmental bodies, such as court opinions, statutes, and regulations. They also include the supporting documents and other media issued and maintained by those bodies, such as dockets, hearings, forms, oral arguments, and legislative histories. These materials can be found in every branch, at every level, national, tribal, state and local, and should be available to anyone with the will and the heart to obtain them. The following principles should govern the dissemination of primary legal materials in the United States: 1)Direct fees for dissemination of primary legal materials should be avoided; 2) Limitations on access through terms of use or the assertion of copyright on primary legal materials is contrary to long-standing public policy and core democratic principles and is misleading to citizens; 3) Primary legal materials should be made available using bulk access mechanisms so they may be downloaded by anyone; 4) The primary legal materials, and the methods used to access them, should be authenticated so people can trust in the integrity of these materials; 5) Historical archives should be made available online and in a static location to the extent possible; 6) Vendor- and media-neutral citation mechanisms should be employed; 7) Technical standards for document structure, identifiers, and metadata should be developed and applied as extensively as possible; 8) Data should be distributed in a computer-processable, non-proprietary form in a manner that meets best current practices for the distribution of open government data. That data should represent the definitive documents, not just aggregate, preliminary, or modified forms; 9) An active program of research and development should be sponsored by governmental bodies that issue primary legal materials to develop new standards and solutions to challenges presented by the electronic distribution of definitive primary legal materials. Examples include the automated detection and redaction of private personal information in documents; 10) An active program of education, training, and documentation should be undertaken to help governmental bodies that issue primary legal materials learn and use best current practices. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.