Legal Research

Case Matrix Gets the Top Prize

By Simon Chester

This morning the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) announced that the international ‘Dieter Meurer Prize for Legal Informatics’ for 2008 ¹ has been awarded to Morten Bergsmo for his creation and development of the Case Matrix, a tool designed to make work on accountability for international crimes committed in armed conflicts more precise and effective.

Keen Slaw readers can read the award in Norwegian here.

Case Matrix is a unique, law-driven case management application representing a significant innovation in how to approach the investigation and prosecution of core international crimes. First, it provides an overview of elements of crimes and modes of liability for all offences under the ICC Statute. Each element or requirement is hyperlinked to the Elements Commentary. Second, it provides a comprehensive list of means of proof for every element of crime and mode of liability. Each means of proof is hyperlinked to a document providing legal authority. Third, it provides a database service to keep track of and organise evidence relevant to each legal requirement.

Last year’s winner was our colleague Graham Greenleaf of Austlii and Worldlii fame.

1. Sponsored by the German Association for Computing in the Judiciary (’Deutscher EDV-Gerichtstag e.V.’) and the German-language legal information service provider ‘juris GmbH’ (Germany’s ‘LexisNexis’ or ‘Lovdata’)

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 19, 2008 (boomark / email).