Legal Links
The best site on trials in general, called simply Famous Trials, is run by Doug Linder at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. It contains transcripts, evidence and commentary relating to dozens of the proceedings covered in The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, including those of both named, Ray Buckey, William Calley, John Scopes, Henry Sweet and the Salem witches. A vast collection of older texts, ranging from the Code of Hammurabi to the complete laws of Emperor Justinian and the collected writings of Thomas Jefferson, is contained at the Constitution Society’s Liberty Library. Another site that merits exploration, containing articles on legal history, sociology and crime fiction, is the University of Texas Law School’s Tarlton E-Text Collection.
Anyone who wants to immerse themselves in the even rawer material of day-to-day English trial history can find a selection of Old Bailey prosecutions, spanning the years 1674 and 1834 and a range of offences running from arson to zoophilia, at www.oldbaileyonline.org. Another juicy collection, drawn from the first half of the eighteenth century, is contained in the five-volume Newgate Calendar hosted at http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/completenewgate.htm. The more spectacular treasons and conspiracies of British history are assembled in a work known as the State Trials, and an edition of 1742 is published online by the Constitution Society: www.constitution.org/trials/ccst1742/ccst1742.htm.
War crimes trials are well reported on the internet. Transcripts of the first Nuremberg trial (along with much else) can be found via the Yale Law School’s Avalon site at www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm. Full or edited records from the later Nuremberg trials are available at several locations, notably www.mazal.org and sites maintained by the University of the West of England (www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/trials.htm) and Harvard Law School (www.law.harvard.edu/library/digital/digital_projects.htm). The complete records of the Eichmann Trial are searchable at www.nizkor.org; while transcripts from the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević are posted on www.un.org/icty. Those interested in following proceedings at the equivalent Rwanda tribunal can find its website at http://www.ictr.org. Developments at the International Criminal Court can be followed via the court’s official site: www.icc-cpi.int.
Televised courtrooms
Staring at justice is often far more compelling than reading about it, and forensic voyeurs are well catered for on the web. The granddaddy of the televised trial is Court TV, and at www.courttv.com you can find more or less engrossing footage from ongoing prosecutions across the United States and beyond, as well as an archive going back more than a decade and historical material that is even older. CNN also carries a wide selection of legal news, including video reports and court documents: see www.cnn.com/law. Appellate hearings typically lack the tension of trials, but judicial junkies might nevertheless want to check out the increasing number of state supreme courts that are putting oral arguments online; for those of Ohio and Florida, go to www.co.warren.oh.us/prosecutor/archives.htm and www.wfsu.org/gavel2gavel/.
Judicial and legislative records
Current judgments are available at no charge from a number of sources. The United States Supreme Court publishes its own decisions at www.supremecourtus.gov, and a large archive of US cases, along with links to many more American legal sites, can be found at Findlaw. The UK judiciary runs official websites at www.parliament.uk/judicial_work/judicial_work.cfm (House of Lords) and www.privy-council.org.uk (Privy Council). Further decisions, taken from the Court of Appeal, the High Court and other parts of the judicial machine in and beyond the United Kingdom, can be found at the British and Irish Legal Information Institute. Even more rulings, including those of several inferior tribunals, are published on www.courtservice.gov.uk.
The text of all new federal statutes is available via the US Government Printing Office. UK statutes and statutory instruments can be found at Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.The US Department of Justice maintains a site devoted to federal criminal law, and equivalent state materials can be found at www.ncsconline.org. The Department for Constitutional Affairs in the United Kingdom deals with criminal matters at www.dca.gov.uk/criminal/crimfr.htm, and the Home Office maintains a site at www.homeoffice.gov.uk. Official UK statistics and reports are available via the Official Documents website or at Her Majesty’s Stationery Office..
International materials
International materials – meaning those concerned with questions beyond the domestic jurisdictions of the US and UK – are readily available on the web. Three of the best general sites are run by the American Society of International Law, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, and New York University. Treaty collections can be found at the United Nations Treaty Collection, the Council of Europe Treaty Office. Links to specific countries’ courts are available at the following addresses.
AUSTRALIA
All the major courts, legal institutions cases and statutes in Australia can be accessed either via a site maintained by the National Library of Australia or via the Australasian Legal Information Institute (Austlii).
Judgments published in the Supreme Court and reports from the mid-1980s.
INDIA
Basic information on the constitution and jurisdiction, rules and judges.
Court of Appeal of New Zealand
Searchable selection of New Zealand Court of Appeal decisions from 1998.
Constitutional Court of South Africa
Full-text judgments from 1995.
Two of the most important international human rights monitoring groups are Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The New-York based Center for Constitutional Rights, along with Human Rights Watch, have maintained an impressive degree of scrutiny and resistance to executive pretensions in the US since September 11 2001, and both deserve support.
The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library offers a vast selection of international and regional materials, along with links to several thousand other sites. It includes a site devoted specifically to human rights treaties and other instruments, as does the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. A searchable database of Commonwealth human rights cases is maintained by the London-based organisation Interights. Judgments concerning the European Convention on Human Rights can be found at the wesbite of the European Court of Human Rights.
Death Penalty Information Centre
Good source, regularly updated, for data on US death penalty issues.
Derechos Human Rights: Death Penalty
A site containing links to NGOs and abolitionist organisations around the world, with a particularly good selection of local US contacts.
European Committee for the Prevention of Torture
Contains reports from the Committee’s visits to places of detention.
London-based but internationally-active group that helps torture survivors use the law to obtain compensation and other forms of legal remedy against their assailants.
World Organization Against Torture
Helps national human rights organizations fight torture. Site holds details of programmes and appeals.