The judgement handed down by the Supreme Court of Appeal today in the appeal of National Director of Public Prosecutions v Zuma is up on the Southern African Legal Information Institute site.
Now you can read the judgement yourself.
Now you can make up your own mind on the court’s reasoning.
Now you can enter a discussion with first hand knowledge.
So who can doubt the important of organisations like SAFLII to democracy. Free online access to law reports make them available to millions. Of course if Internet access weren’t so constrained in South Africa that would be millions more. But that isn’t the point here.
The point is that without SAFLII only a few thousand people who could afford access not to one case but to an entire database would be able to read the case, in a few months time.
This kind of access to law is vital to the functioning of a democracy.
Everyone grateful for the access to law which SAFLII gives remember this.
Remember this next time that SAFLII needs to raise funds. Remember this next time a publisher lays claim to some kind of exclusive deal with courts over the case reports. Remember what free access to this public record means and ask yourself why other public resources, such as the results of publicly financed research, should be privatised.
Full disclosure: I advise SAFLII on copyright issues.
I don’t even bother looking elsewhere for case reports. Saflii is my first port of call and the team is doing amazing work. I noticed the latest Zuma judgment this morning (around 3:30am) and I was impressed it was up so quickly. And then I saw your tweet from hours earlier about it being up. What a brilliant service!