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In this article I present the first two of a new series of open and high-quality international legal data sets: comprehensive, fully reproducible, human- and machine-readable open access collections covering one hundred years of case law of the primary judicial organs of the United Nations and the League of Nations: the Corpus of Decisions: International Court of Justice (CD-ICJ) and the Corpus of Decisions: Permanent Court of International Justice (CD-PCIJ).

Each corpus is designed to capture in its entirety the published case law of its eponymous Court, including majority opinions (judgments, advisory opinions and orders), but also the minority opinions annexed to each decision (declarations, separate opinions and dissenting opinions). The corpora are enriched with useful metadata to enhance text-as-data research and enable stand-alone metadata analyses. While each corpus can stand on its own, the twin corpora are designed to be perfectly interoperable for the purposes of analyses that wish to treat the ICJ and PCIJ as a continuous entity.

The most recent versions of the corpora will always be available open access at doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3826444 (CD-ICJ) and doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3840479 (CD-PCIJ).

Corpus of Decisions: International Court of Justice (CD-ICJ) Link to heading

The Corpus of Decisions: International Court of Justice (CD-ICJ) collects and presents for the first time in human- and machine-readable form all published decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Among these are judgments, advisory opinions and orders, as well as their respective appended minority opinions (declarations, separate opinions and dissenting opinions). The International Court of Justice has kindly made available these documents on its website.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations and one of the most consequential courts in international law. Called the ‘World Court’ by many, it is the only international court with general thematic jurisdiction. While critics occasionally note the lack of compulsory jurisdiction and sharply limited access to the Court, its opinions continue to have an outsize influence on the modern interpretation, codification and wider development of international law.

Every international legal textbook covers the workings and decisions of the Court in extenso and participation in international moot courts such as the Philip C. Jessup Moot Court without regular reference to and citation of the International Court of Justice’s decisions is unthinkable.

Features

  • Fully compatible with the Corpus of Decisions: Permanent Court of International Justice (CD-PCIJ)
  • 27 variables
  • Public Domain (CC Zero 1.0)
  • Open and platform independent file formats (PDF, TXT, CSV)
  • Extensive Codebook
  • Compilation Report explains construction and validation of the data set in detail
  • Large number of diagrams for all purposes (see the ‘ANALYSIS’ archive)
  • Diagrams are available as PDF (for printing) and PNG (for web display)
  • Tables are available as CSV for easy readability by humans and machines
  • Secure cryptographic signatures (SHA3-512 and RSA-4096)
  • Publication of full source code (Open Source)

Corpus of Decisions: Permanent Court of International Justice (CD-PCIJ) Link to heading

The Corpus of Decisions: Permanent Court of International Justice (CD-PCIJ) collects and presents for the first time in human- and machine-readable formats all documents of PCIJ Series A, B and A/B of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ). Among these are judgments, advisory opinions, orders, appended minority opinions, annexes, applications instituting proceedings and requests for an advisory opinion. The International Court of Justice, the successor of the PCIJ, has kindly made available these documents on its website.

The Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) was the primary judicial organ of the League of Nations, the ill-fated predecessor of the United Nations, which existed from 1920 to 1946. Nonetheless, as the first international court with general thematic jurisdiction, the PCIJ influenced international law in profound ways that are still felt today. Every lawyer who sets out on the path of international law encounters epoch-defining opinions such as the Lotus and Factory at Chorzów decisions, but the Court’s lesser-known jurisprudence and the appended minority opinions offer many more ideas and legal principles which are seldom appreciated today.

Features

  • Fully compatible with the Corpus of Decisions: International Court of Justice (CD-ICJ)
  • 29 variables
  • Public Domain (CC Zero 1.0)
  • Open and platform independent file formats (PDF, TXT, CSV)
  • Extensive Codebook
  • Compilation Report explains construction and validation of the data set in detail
  • Large number of diagrams for all purposes (see the ‘ANALYSIS’ archive)
  • Diagrams are available as PDF (for printing) and PNG (for web display)
  • Tables are available as CSV for easy readability by humans and machines
  • Secure cryptographic signatures (SHA3-512 and RSA-4096)
  • Publication of full source code (Open Source)