Summary:

I propose the implementation of a feature that would enable the identification and tagging of statutes within our case law, similar to linking opinion citations. This enhancement aims to improve the efficiency and accuracy of legal research by allowing users to easily find and reference relevant statutes mentioned in caselaw.

Background:

Currently, our caselaw database provides comprehensive legal decisions, but it lacks a systematic way of identifying and linking to statutes mentioned within these cases. Users often have to manually search for statutes, which is time-consuming and prone to error. Additionally, it would provide a new way to group opinions together, something that I think would be of great value to our users.

Proposed Solution:

• Create new Statute Table
• Update Eyecite to find and extract statutes
• Ingest bulk statute text to link to
• Tag and index all statutes

Potential Challenges:

• Maybe hard to find all versions of a statute to link to the one referenced at the time of publication of the opinion.

There is an open source (or maybe now for profit org) OpenStates that works on this issue. Would be smart to contact them I think if we start down this road. They may be more about tracking legislation than final statutes, but their insight will be invaluable.