This book, Developments in Human Rights Law and the Proposed Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information: The New Human Rights-Advocacy Approach and the Ten Criteria for the Formal Recognition of New Human Rights, is Volume 1 of the four-volume New Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information Book Series). The other volumes are The New Human Rights-Based Huricompatisation Model of Ascertainment of Indigenous Customary Law: Strategies for Adequate Local and Global Public Access (Volume 2); Innovative Technological Mechanisms for Adequate Web-Based Access to National and Global Public Legal Information (Volume 3); and A Model Empirical Study of the Current State of Governmental Provision of Free Access to Nigerian Public Legal Information (Volume 4).

The book offers the first and only comprehensive analysis of the right of every person (including persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples) to know the laws that regulate their conduct and activities, which they are presumed to know and are bound to obey under the rule of law. It devises the universal legal remedy for the grave injustice in the slavish application of the equally universal ancient and modern doctrine of ignorance of the law is no excuse (ignorantia juris non excusat) to punish people worldwide for violating laws that are inaccessible and thereby unknowable to them.

It argues that the right to know the law requires free adequate access to all formats (physical and digital or electronic) of the official and authentic versions of all categories of public legal information, including legislation (statute law), court judgments, regulations and orders, law-related public documents, and regional and international legal instruments. It discusses the corresponding moral and rule-of-law exclusive legal duty of every tier of government (local, regional, and national) and every intergovernmental organisation (IGO) with law-making and judicial powers (e.g. the United Nations, the European Union, and the African Union) to provide the required free adequate access to all categories of their laws.

The book introduces the concept of free access to public legal information in the discussion of its key terminology, multidisciplinary perspectives, and historical overview. It uniquely analyses the persistent global problem of inadequate access to public legal information and uses a qualitative cause-elimination technique, developed for the study, to identify its root cause (primary or fundamental cause). That root cause identification provided the basis for the appropriate innovative recommendation for its effective solution—a solution that has never been applied to solve this problem that the world has been experiencing over the centuries.

It examines the existence of the right of free access to public legal information as a bona fide legal right, discusses the theory of legal certainty as its overriding theoretical framework and examines the other concepts that also underpin the right—the duty-right relationship between the State and the people under the rule of law and the doctrine of ignorance of the law is no excuse. Further, it identifies the concept of ascertainment of indigenous customary law that is a specific aspect of the general theory of legal certainty (fully discussed in Volume 2 of the New Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information Book Series), the presumption of the reliability of information from official sources, and information findability (both discussed in Volume 3 of the said Series) as relevant concepts.

The book reviews the literature on the existing status of the right of free access to public legal information as a substantive or stand-alone human right, presents some of the relevant characteristic definitions of human rights, highlights the problem of human rights inflation, and examines the existing scholarly and institutional criteria for the formal universal recognition of new human rights. It formulates the new human rights-advocacy approach (NHRAA) to harmonise the existing different sets of criteria and also remedy the inadequacy of those criteria; and discusses the ten onerous criteria of this approach for the formal recognition of any deserving legal right as a human right.

Further, it analyses how the right of free access to public legal information satisfies all the ten criteria of the new human rights-advocacy approach and therefore qualifies for its formal universal recognition as a substantive or stand-alone hu-man right; formulates the pioneering proposal for the United Nations Convention on the Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information; and discusses the essential principles and implementation of the proposed Convention, among which is the counterbalancing doctrine of ignorance of inaccessible law is an excuse.

This book contains far-reaching recommendations and proposals for enhancing free local, regional, national, and global access to all categories of law and law-related public documents. It provides law-reform and policy-relevant guide-lines that the United Nations and her specialised agencies; regional intergovernmental organisations; local, regional, and national governments; and policymakers can implement worldwide. Its subject matter is also of interest to all those who are involved or interested in the diverse issues relating to international human rights law, human rights advocacy, indigenous rights, political science, public administration, administration of justice, and public legal information website development worldwide. They include academics and other researchers; students; legal practitioners; judges of local, national, regional, and international courts; law enforcement agencies; civil society; and legal informaticists, legal information technologists, and public legal information architects. The book is relevant to all persons and organisations worldwide, as they are all potential victims of the above-mentioned untold injustice in the application of the universal doctrine of ignorance of the law is no excuse even where the law in question is inaccessible and thereby unknowable to any affected person.

Keywords: Human right of free access to public legal information, Huricompatisation customary law ascertainment, New human rights-advocacy approach ten criteria for recognising new human rights, Human right of free access to law, United Nations convention on free access to law, Ignorance of inaccessible law is an excuse, Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Human rights-based approach (HRBA), Nationally networked one-stop official public legal information websites, Official public legal information generic top-level domain (.officiallaws gTLD), ISBN 9789083108520 (eBook), ISBN 9789083108506 (Paperback)

Book Contact Email: info@koinonialegal.com

Book Website: https://publiclegalinformation.com