On Wednesday,  the LII project team working on the new Code of Federal Regulations project demonstrated some prototypes for an audience of staffers from the US Government Printing Office and the Office of the Federal Register.  The CFR work is part of a joint project undertaken with USGPO, the Federal Depository Library Program, and the Cornell Law Library.  As yet we have nothing we’re ready to show the public — but we will soon, and we hope you’ll provide us with insights and feedback when we do.  Are we trying to pump up the suspense?  You bet we are…….

Today in VoxPopuLII, Floris Bex discusses a multidisciplinary approach to the use of graphical tools and analytic tools for modelling argumentation as a practical basis for criminal investigation.  Lots of very interesting and practical stuff, and well worth a look.

Today in VoxPopuLII, Staffan Malmgren takes on the topic of crowdsourcing legal commentary.  As more and more primary materials become available for free,  attention is turning from making law available to making law truly accessible and understandable.  This is a problem that the LII began addressing in 1994, with the creation of its “Law about…” pages (now the WEX legal dictionary and encyclopedia) and with its LIIBULLETIN analyses of Supreme Court cases.   Staffan’s project is a fascinating one, and we are thinking about how to apply its lessons to some things we are planning for the near future.  Stay tuned.

This morning, Google News shows 354 stories related to yesterday’s announcement by USDOT of a new proposed regulation to ban texting by drivers of some commercial vehicles.  The LII’s partner project CeRI was prominently featured in DOT’s announcement. CeRI has opened regulationroom.org, a place where the public can go to learn about the proposed regulation and comment on it.  For the public, Regulation Room is a place to offer the government feedback on the new rule .  For CeRI researchers, it’s an experiment in using Web 2.0 techniques and user-interface design to offer richer interactions that we hope will improve the quality and effectiveness of public input into the agency rulemaking process.  We’re watching this process closely — along with the load average on the server it runs on — and we hope you’ll join in.