A posting of 2002-12-08 from John M. Greacen to the OASIS LegalXML Electronic Court Filing TC announces that the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee on 2002-12-05 adopted the TC's Electronic Court Filing Query and Response Standard and Electronic Court Filing 1.1 Proposed Standard XML specifications as Proposed Standards for public comment and experimental use. The LegalXML TC's proposed specifications are vetted through the US 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 draft Electronic Court Filing 1.1 Proposed Standard provides an XML DTD required for Court Filing, updated in light of agreements specified in 'Principles of XML Development for Justice and Public Safety.' The Electronic Court Filing Query and Response Standard "describes the metadata that would be required for electronic retrieval of information available from a court that complies with this standard and to detail the structure that information would have. It also supplies a set of standard queries that it highly recommends courts support to facilitate electronic filing."

Electronic Court Filing 1.1 Proposed Standard. Produced by the OASIS LegalXML Member Section Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee. Author: Marty Halvorson. Edited by Roger Winters and Robin Gibson. Document Number: 22072002CF1.1. Version Date: 22 July 2002. 61 pages. "This Draft Specification provides the XML DTD required for Court Filing updated in light of agreements specified in 'Principles of XML Development for Justice and Public Safety'. The DTD is 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." From the statement of intent: With the release of Electronic Court Filing 1.1 as a proposed standard, Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee has reached an important milestone. Electronic Court Filing 1.1 should enable courts and Electronic Filing Service Providers to engage in standards-based e-filing without delay. The work of the OASIS LegalXML Member Section Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee is ongoing. Electronic Court Filing 1.1 is based upon a Document Type Definition (DTD). DTDs are currently being replaced by W3C schemas, which are a more recent and robust way of defining XML documents. Therefore, Electronic Court Filing 2.0 is anticipated to address schema in addition to an updated DTD. In addition, the W3C on February 14, 2002 made the XML Signature Standard a W3C Recommendation (and approved for Draft Standard Publication) and Exclusive Canonicalization (a companion work) should follow soon. This development makes the possibility of digitally signing Electronic Court Filing documents using W3C standards a present reality..."

The draft Electronic Court Filing Query and Response Standard "provides the XML DTD required for Court Filing Query and Response. It was developed by the OASIS Legal XML Court Filing Technical Committee workgroup. It is intended to describe the metadata that would be required for electronic retrieval of information available from a court that complies with this standard and to detail the structure that information would have. No information regarding the content of the information returned is included in the scope of this standard other than that which is required to accomplish the task. The Query and Response DTD is meant to be generic and flexible. A court using it may implement any query it agrees to support. With the DTD, the Court Filing Technical Committee has described a set of standard queries that it highly recommends courts support to facilitate electronic filing. These queries are discussed in Section 4 and form the basis of the examples in Section 5 of [the draft] document."

The Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee was chartered to "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."

Role of the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee in review of LegalXML documents: "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." (from the TC Charter)

LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Subcommittees:

• Case Management System Application Program Interface (CMS/API) Subcommittee. This SC's work includes Query & Response (Q&R) and Court Data Configuration (CDC).
• Court Document Subcommittee
• Court Filing Policy Subcommittee. See draft.
• Certification Subcommittee
• Trusted Specification Repository Subcommittee

Archives for the LegalXML Electronic Court Filing mailing lists:

• Court Filing TC
• Certification Subcommittee
• Case Management System Application Program Interface (CMS/API) Subcommittee
• Court Document Subcommittee
• Court Filing Policy Subcommittee
• Trusted Specification Repository Subcommittee
• LegalXML Electronic Court Filing comment list