Welcome in the Dataset Catalogue of WetSuite! With this catalogue, we aim to provide examples of interesting datasets for legal researchers. While other, more exhaustive, catalogues of datasets exist (such as data.overheid.nl, data.europa.eu, and developer.overheid.nl), the WetSuite Dataset Catalogue is a curated selection of datasets which may be relevant for legal researchers, with comments on the usability for legal research purposes.
TODO: Iets toevoegen over dat je suggesties ergens naartoe kan sturen/mailen en dat we daar dan misschien wat mee doen?
- NL - House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) and Senate (Eerste Kamer)
- NL - Court rulings
- NL - Official publications of local governments
- NL - Local government assembly documents
- NL - Disciplinary law by goverment
- NL - Rent Tribunal (Huurcommissie)
- NL - Algorithm Register (Algoritmeregister)
- EU - European Court of Justice - Curia
- EU - Hof van Justitie van de Europese Unie - Eur-Lex
- Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens - HUDOC
- Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens - ECHR Open Data
- EU - European Parliament (EP)
- NL - De Geschillencommissie
- NL - Supervisory Committees (Penitentiary institutions)
- NL - Island Councils of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba
- Aruba, Curacao and Saint Martin
NL - House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) and Senate (Eerste Kamer)
| Location | The KOOP SRU API. |
|---|---|
| Administrator | KOOP |
| Time period | 1814 - currently |
| Completeness | Complete |
| Terms of use | Free to use (partly CC0, partly exempted from copyright). |
Content of the dataset
Official documents such as Parliamentary Papers (Kamerstukken), Proceedings (Handelingen), Appendices to the Proceedings (Aanhangselen bij de Handelingen), and the official agendas. These can be manually searched through zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl.
Note that the Proceedings from the period 1814-1847 are a reconstruction created at a later date. These reconstructions do contain references to the sources they used.
Technical usability
The entire dataset can be accessed via the KOOP SRU API as part of the "Officiële bekendmakingen" (Official publications). More information and documentation of this API can be found through data.overheid.nl.
Some tools that can help you to access this dataset are:
What to take into account
Open Data Portal of the Tweede Kamer
The Tweede Kamer also has its own Open Data Portal. However, we do not recommend using this portal for data that can also be found through the KOOP SRU API, as the KOOP SRU API is more comprehensive in terms of time coverage and more consistent. With the TK API, it may happen that a draft report is provided under a certain identifier and later replaced by the final published report under that same identifier.
However, some information that is accesible through the TK API is not available through the KOOP SRU API, such as machine-readable data on votes and party memberships. For this data, the TK API can be useful, but it is important to note that only the publications from KOOP are considered official and authentic. Bert Hubert has developed OpenTK, which is a website which allows for searching through all the date that is available trough the TK Open Data Portal (🇳🇱).
NL - Court rulings
| Location | Description of Open Data Rechtspraak: https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Uitspraken/Paginas/Open-Data.aspx (🇳🇱) Manually searchable via: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/ (🇳🇱) |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Raad voor de rechtspraak (Council for the judiciary) |
| Time period | 1841 - now |
| Completeness | Limited. Not every ruling gets published. See also: Besluit selectiecriteria uitsprakendatabank op rechtspraak.nl (🇳🇱). |
| Terms of use | No copyright restrictions. However, it is requested to not overuse the API. |
| Keywords | Court cases, The Netherlands, rulings, dispute resolution |
Content of the dataset
Through the Open Data Rechtspraak, all published rulings and conclusions of judicial bodies within the Kingdom of the Netherlands can be found. The data is accessible via an API, but cannot be downloaded in its entirety directly. In addition to rulings published by de Judiciary, there is also metadata available for rulings that have not been published by the judiciary, but can only be found in legal journals.
Additionally, relevant exhaustive metadata is available, such as those listing all (historic) judicial bodies within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the periods during which they were active. This dataset also appears to contain metadata of rulings by disciplinary courts, but not the text of those rulings.
Technical usability
The API provides the rulings in XML format with accompanying metadata. This structure is clearly described in the documentation. Various components of judicial rulings are also annotated in a machine-readable way.
The API allows specified searches based on legal body, type, legal area, time period, or ECLI. However, it doesn't provide filtering based on the content of the rulings. There are already several existing tools to make use of this dataset, including:
• The 'uitspraken’ tool by Martijn Staal (Python, EUPL-1.2).
What to take into account
- This dataset is incomplete. Especially for lower court rulings, the user should take notice of potential bias because of the selection criteria for publication. The selection criteria for publication of rulings have also changed over time. Divisions of courts may also interpret the criteria differently.
- The rulings are anonymized. Since the anonymization may be changed at a later date, the contents of the dataset may change over time as well.
- Publications of rulings may be retracted.
- The publication of a ruling may not happen immediately. Some rulings are published weeks, months,years or even decades after the date of the ruling. Specifically the Supreme Court regularly publishes old decisions, so this gap between the ruling and publication is currently up to 182 years.
NL - Official publications of local governments
| Location | https://www.officielebekendmakingen.nl/ |
|---|---|
| Administrator | KOOP |
| Completeness | Complete. |
| Terms of use | Excluded from copyright (art. 11 Auteurswet) |
Content of the dataset
The official publications of Dutch local governments (provinces, municipalities, water boards, and joint arrangements) can be found in the respective official gazettes (Provincieblad, Gemeenteblad, Waterschapsblad, and Blad gemeenschappelijke regeling). These publications are managed by KOOP and are centrally accessible via https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/uitgebreidzoeken.
This data is also available through the KOOP SRU API.
NL - Local government assembly documents
| Location | Through the website of the relevant body; or via openbesluitvorming.nl |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Varying |
| Time period | Varying |
| Completeness | Varying |
| Terms of use | Varying |
Content of the dataset
The assembly documents of municipal councils, provincial councils (Provinciale Staten) and general governances of water boards are not centrally available. There is also no standardization of these types of documents or their numbering and naming. The primary place to find this kind of data is on the website of the respective democratic body.
Meeting documents from certain local democratic bodies are available via openbesluitvorming.nl; however, their completeness varies significantly.
NL - Disciplinary law by goverment
| Location | Accessible through the KOOP SRU API. Manually searchable via https://tuchtrecht.overheid.nl/ |
|---|---|
| Administrator | KOOP |
| Time period | 2001 - currently |
| Keywords | The Netherlands, disciplinary law, dispute resolution, rulings |
Content of the dataset
All Dutch disciplinary law organized by the government is available through this dataset.
NL - Rent Tribunal (Huurcommissie)
| Location | Manually searchable via https://hip.huurcommissie.nl/p/uitspraken |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Rent Tribunal (Huurcommissie) |
| Time period | Past 5 years. |
| Completeness | All (anonymized) rulings of the past 5 years seem to be available through this portal, but the exact completeness remains unclear. Older rulings are probably still available for the Rent Tribunal, but these are not available through the online portal. |
| Terms of use | No copyright limitations. Besides that, unclear. |
| Keywords | The Netherlands, dispute resolution, rulings |
Content of the dataset
The Rent Committee (Huurcommissie) is a body established by the Dutch government tasked with resolving certain disputes between tenants and landlords of residential properties.
The legal authority and procedural rules of the Rent Committee can be found in Title 7.4 of the Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek), the Uitvoeringswet huurprijzen woonruimte (Uhw), and lower regulations based on these acts.
What to take into account
The Rent Committee has an extensive history and has been drastically reformed multiple times during this period. For instance, it's good to know there used to be only local rent committees, which only relatively recently have been merged into the central Rent Committee that we know now.
NL - Algorithm Register (Algoritmeregister)
| Location | https://algoritmes.overheid.nl/nl |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations |
| Time period | Varying |
| Completeness | Unknown |
Content of the dataset
The Algorithm Register is an example of the many public registers maintained by the national government. It contains information about algorithms used by government bodies and public organizations.
Technical usability
The Algorithm Register is free and open-source software under the terms of the EUPL-1.2 license. The source code can be found on GitHub. Additionally, there is an option to export the data in the register in CSV format.
EU - European Court of Justice - Curia
| Location | Manually searchable through https://www.curia.europa.eu |
|---|---|
| Administrator | European Court of Justice |
| Time period | 1955 - currently |
| Completeness | Fairly comprehensive. The Curia database contains all publicly accessible information regarding cases brought before the European Court of Justice and the General Court. |
| Terms of use | The HTML versions of the published files are intended for consultation only. |
| Keywords | Court cases, Europe, rulings, dispute resolution |
Content of the dataset
Curia publishes all publicly accessible information regarding cases brought before the European Court of Justice and the General Court, searchable through a search form.
Since January 1st, 2012 (general case law) and January 1st, 2010 (civil service case law), case law is published exclusively in digital form on the EUR-Lex website (an officially sanctioned, free-access publication). The Curia site also provides access to the case law published on EUR-Lex through hyperlinks in the list of search results.
The digital case law consists of a collection of judicial decisions, accompanied (when applicable) by the Advocate General's opinion, in PDF format. To facilitate access to these documents, additional information has been added, as well as HTML versions with hyperlinks. This information is not part of the official digital case law and has no official status.
EU - Hof van Justitie van de Europese Unie - Eur-Lex
| Location | Handmatig doorzoekbaar door: https://eur-lex.europa.eu |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Het Publicatiebureau |
| Time period | 1952 - heden |
| Completeness | Vrij compleet. |
| Terms of use | De HTML-versies van de gepubliceerde dossiers zijn alleen voor raadpleging bedoeld. |
| Keywords | rechtspraak, Europa, uitspraken, geschillenbeslechting |
Content of the dataset
Eur-Lex omvat de jurisprudentie van de rechterlijke instanties van het Hof van Justitie van de Europese Unie (het Hof van Justitie, het Gerecht en het voormalige Gerecht voor ambtenarenzaken). De jurisprudentie bestaat uit een verzameling rechterlijke beslissingen, zo nodig aangevuld met de conclusies van de advocaat-generaal, doorzoekbaar door middel van een zoekformulier.
Sinds 1 januari 2010 wordt de jurisprudentie voor ambtenarenzaken alleen nog maar digitaal gepubliceerd. Sinds 1 januari 2012 is dit ook het geval voor de jurisprudentie van het Hof. De officiële versies van de gepubliceerde dossiers zijn beschikbaar in pdf-formaat. Er zijn ook HTML-versies, maar die zijn alleen voor raadpleging bedoeld.
Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens - HUDOC
| Location | https://hudoc.echr.coe.int |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens |
| Time period | 1960 - heden |
| Completeness | Vóór 1998 beperkte compleetheid. |
| Keywords | rechtspraak, Europa, uitspraken, geschillenbeslechting |
Content of the dataset
De HUDOC database publiceert de uitspraken van het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens, de besluiten en rapporten van de Europese Commissie voor de Rechten van de Mens en de resoluties van het Comité van Ministers. De lijst is doorzoekbaar door middel van filters en sleutelwoorden.
Alle uitspraken staan als HTML op de site en worden ook gepubliceerd als downloadbaar pdf- en Word-bestand.
Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens - ECHR Open Data
| Location | https://echr-opendata.eu/ |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications of Poznan University of Technology |
| Time period | 22 juli 2010 - 14 december 2023 |
| Completeness | Incompleet, beperkte tijdsperiode |
| Terms of use | You are free: * To Share: To copy, distribute and use the database. * To Create: To produce works from the database. * To Adapt: To modify, transform and build upon the database. As long as you: * Attribute: You must attribute any public use of the database, or works produced from the database, in the manner specified in the ODbL. For any use or redistribution of the database, or works produced from it, you must make clear to others the license of the database and keep intact any notices on the original database. * Share-Alike: If you publicly use any adapted version of this database, or works produced from an adapted database, you must also offer that adapted database under the ODbL. * Keep open: If you redistribute the database, or an adapted version of it, then you may use technological measures that restrict the work (such as DRM) as long as you also redistribute a version without such measures. |
| Keywords | rechtspraak, Europa, uitspraken, geschillenbeslechting |
Content of the dataset
De ECHR-OD publiceert alle uitspraken van het EHRM van 2010-2023. De uitspraken zijn op vele verschillende manieren downloadbaar: structured, unstructured en raw en hieronder weer als bijv. word doc, bag-of-words, parsed, etc. etc.
Ook is het volledige verwerkingsproces in te zien en is de gebruikte code beschikbaar via hun GitHub.
EU - European Parliament (EP)
NL - De Geschillencommissie
Stichting De Geschillencommissie is een koepel voor verschillende geschillencommissies voor buitengerechtelijke geschillenbeslechting. Zie ook: Implementatiewet buitengerechtelijke geschillenbeslechting
NL - Supervisory Committees (Penitentiary institutions)
Alle penitentiaire instellingen hebben een commissie van toezicht.
NL - Island Councils of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba
De eilandsraden de volksvertegenwoordigende organen van de openbare lichamen Bonaire, St. Eustatius en Saba.
What to take into account
De wijze waarop publicatie geschiedt en de toegankelijkheid verschillen enorm, er bestaat geen gecentraliseerd format voor alle eilandsraden. Dit bemoeilijkt het proces van het creëren van een alle eilandsraden omvattende database (en daaropvolgend onderzoek).
Aruba, Curacao and Saint Martin
Last updated: 13-Nov-2024