‘Over the past five years, an international “free access to law movement” has emerged, based around independent, often University-based, Legal Information Institutes (LIIs). They give links to primary legal materials – legislation, case-law, treaties etc., and some secondary materials.

Here’s a list of the LIIs with the dates when they were founded :

LII (Cornell) (I didn’t realize that was one of them, least of all the earliest)
AustLII 1995
BAILII 2000
CanLII 2000
PacLII 2001
HKLII 2002
IRLII 2001
SAFLII 2003
NZLII 2004
Jurburkina 2004
Droit ‘Francophone (2003 – ‘may include any francophone countries, but initially concetrates on West and Central Africa.

Via an article by Graham Greenleaf, ‘Global Law Research: WorldLII and the Future’, in Delia Venables’ latest Internet newsletter (subscription £40)

To console anyone who wanted French rather than African sites, here is something completely different: a French language portal with links to all sort of things. Lexilogos has links on first names, last names, quotes, etymology, slang, keyboards, flags and anthems, French tourism, song texts and much more. Here’s My Way in the original – well, they changed that, as can be seen from the English, German and Spanish versions:

El fin
Muy cerca esta
Lo afrontaré
Serenamente

Ya ves
Yo he sido asi
Te lo diré
Sinceramente

Vivi
La intensidad
Y no encontré
Jamas fronteras

Jugué
Sin descanzar
Y a mi manera

(Thanks to Rainer Langenhan in email – and Languagehat has already blogged this).