[August 01, 2002] The Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee is developing "specifications for the use of XML to create legal documents and to transmit legal documents from an attorney, party or self-represented litigant to a court, from a court to an attorney, party or self-represented litigant or to another court, and from an attorney or other user to another attorney or other user of legal documents." [website main page 2002-08-01]
Subcommittees: The Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee had five subcommittees as of 2002-07-30: (1) Case Management System Application Program Interface (CMS/API) Subcommittee -- including Query & Response (Q&R) and Court Data Configuration (CDC); (2) Court Document Subcommittee; (3) Court Filing Policy Subcommittee; (4) Certification Subcommittee; (5) Trusted Specification Repository Subcommittee.
From the Charter:
The Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee will develop specifications for the use of XML to create legal documents and to transmit legal documents from an attorney, party or self-represented litigant to a court, from a court to an attorney, party or self-represented litigant or to another court, and from an attorney or other user to another attorney or other user of legal documents. Because it is an essential part of the business model for electronic filing applications, the Technical Committee will also develop specifications for (1) querying a court for data or documents and for returning the response to such a query, (2) expressing unique court policies and requirements in XML, (3) providing legally sufficient service of court filings on other attorneys and unrepresented parties to a court case (and, if and when authorized by law, service of process on defendants or respondents to establish the court's jurisdiction over them under principles of due process of law), and (4) linking electronic documents to law firm and court case management information and document management systems. It will develop additional specifications found to be needed to support the transition of courts and the legal profession from reliance upon paper documents and paper court files to electronic documents and electronic case files.
In addition to the OASIS approval process, the Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee will provide its proposed and recommended specifications to the National Consortium for State Court Automation Standards, a subcommittee of the Joint Technology Committee of the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) and National Association for Court Management (NACM). The National Consortium further vets the Technical Committee's recommendations through a "Joint Standards Development (JSD) Team" comprised of representatives of state and local courts and private sector service providers interested in and knowledgeable about electronic court filing. The Joint Technology Committee acts upon the Technical Committee's proposals, based upon the JSD team's recommendations, to adopt a specification as a "proposed standard" for experimental implementation. After a "proposed standard" successfully completes two interoperability tests, the Technical Committee transmits the specification to the Joint Technology Committee for adoption as a "recommended standard." When the Joint Technology Committee approves that recommendation, it is sent to the Boards of Directors of the two parent bodies for formal adoption on behalf of all state courts. The members of the Conference of Chief Justices will then take whatever actions are required to implement the standards in their jurisdictions.
The Conference of State Court Administrators and National Association for Court Management may also submit the specifications for recognition by the Global Justice Information Network Advisory Committee of the United States Department of Justice.
The Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee will be an ongoing entity with continuing responsibility for reviewing and revising the requirements for XML specifications with its scope and lifecycle maintenance of its standards.
July 2002 Draft specification. "OASIS LegalXML Member Section Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee Draft. Electronic Court Filing Version 1.1. Proposed Standard." This is a "draft Specification which provides the XML DTD required for Court Filing updated in light of agreements specified in 'Principles of XML Development for Justice and Public Safety,' August 28, 2001, and as detailed in the 'LegalXML Standards Development Project: Horizontal Elements Draft Standard,' November28, 2001. The document is intended to describe the information required for electronic court filing and the structure of that information. No information regarding the content of any pleading or other legal devices (e.g., contracts, orders, judgments) is included, other than what is required to accomplish the intended task. The document is a Proposed Standard collaboratively developed by the COSCA/NACM 1 Joint Technology Committee and the OASIS LegalXML Member Section Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee. Portions of this document were derived from the 'Court Filing Straw Man,' collaboratively developed by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts, SCT Global Government Solutions, Inc., and West Group... The document includes a DTD to be used to validate the syntax of XML documents used for court filing. Annotations appearing inside the DTD, which add further definition and specification, shall be binding. Appendices are non-normative and may contain well-formed, validated examples. Where conflict arises between an example and the DTD or the body of this document, the body or DTD shall be deemed normative and ruling..."
[June 10, 2002] "Court Policy Interface Requirements." Concept Draft. June 10, 2002. Edited by Donald L. Bergeron. 4 pages. "The Court Policy Interface (CPI) is a design element to bridge the design principle of over inclusive but optional and the legitimate need for all the parties (courts, parties, attorneys, prosecutors) to set or know the expectations and/or constraints placed on the data. The principle of over inclusive but optional is used in Court Filing, Court Document, Query/ Response and most other widely used standards. The data contained in the CPI reflects the Court Rules and administrative procedures for a specific Court in a jurisdiction. The concept is that a Court may post an object at a well-known location that reflects the current rules of the court. They are likely to keep past CPI definitions to support long running cases where the rules are locked at a point in time. Other models to be explored are delivery via Query-Response or perhaps along the line of the Interface for Content Exchange (ICE) negotiation model. The initial implementation will likely be to reduce the scope of content models within the dtds or document schemas. It will also be used to pass along constants to be used. Some constants include but are not limited to, the filing fees by class of action, hours of operation and official date/time filing policies... The overarching goal of the CPI is to reduce the need for human commerce between the courts and organizations that interact with them. Only in this way can we control the addition workload during the startup of systems and allow for the evolution and maintenance of rules and administrative needs..." [source]
