With the publication of the databases, residents can review cases themselves and even request cases. A pleased joint-public prosecutor told RTL on Friday that 'publishing the databases by the mid-November deadline had been a lot of work, but was successful'. The 43,000 rulings are now available to everyone and consist of, on the one hand, 29,500 extracts of rulings of legal interest, and 13,500 full court decisions made anonymous.
The court decisions come from the upper courts in Luxembourg City and Diekirch, as well as magistrate's courts in Luxembourg City, Esch-sur-Alzette, and Diekirch. All the rulings join those already available online, namely those emerging from the Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation, and the Administrative Court. All databases can be found on justice.lu.
Jeannot Nies explained the demand was there, mostly on the part of lawyers. Added to this was the May 'open data' law, which outlined putting anonymous data of public interest online. The joint-public prosecutor explained that the first database is the JUDOC (Justice Documentation) one. These are rulings selected by a team of magistrates, who looked through every ruling considered interesting. The magistrates them took an excerpt from the court decision given the legal interest arising.
The second database consists of jurisprudence bases, which are fully published with pseudonyms to protect private individuals. Currently, businesses are not anonymised, but this will take place in the future.
Database users can search by buzzwords or by jurisdictions or topics. The two databases will be updated as and when rulings are published. Those interested in finding or requesting a ruling can email credoc@justice.etat.lu, which should have a relatively quick turnaround. Nies did add that at times of high demand, there will be longer waiting times. In principle, rulings should not have any fees, but in practice, if the ruling is supplied in paper, then there will be costs depending on the price at delivery. Additionally, Nies stressed that requests for the 'Service Doc' cost €25 apiece.
Scientific research, however, absolves all fees. Whilst satisfied with the service in general, Nies stressed the importance of staying up-to-date in order to not fall behind the times.
Jurisprudence: Two new databases added to "justice.lu" website
