The Wikisource Legal Tool gathers, wikifies, and sorts the text of a judicial decision. This script does not edit Wikisource--it is a tool to prepare material that can be manually added to Wikisource.
Wikifying and formatting
editWhat it does
edit- Separates the syllabus, opinion of the court, and any concurrences or dissents
- Adds templates:
- To the Syllabus: template:header, template:USSCcase, template:CaseCaption, template:PD-USGov
- To the Opinion of the Court: template:header, template:USSCcase, template:PD-USGov
- To any Dissent or Concurrence: template:header, template:USSCcase2, template:PD-USGov
- Adds data (where available) into the above templates:
- Court
- Volume (citation)
- Reporter (citation)
- Page (citation)
- Case name
- Lower court (not always available)
- Date decided
- Date argued (not always available)
- Docket number (not always available)
- Wikifies foot notes by creating <ref> tags and ==Notes== section
- Known issue with * notes that are sometimes at the begining of an opinion. I am not sure how to handle this, since MediaWiki automatically assigns numbers to foot notes
- Wikifies links to:
- Full citation to U.S. Reporter
- Full citation to Federal Reporter
What it does not do (yet)
edit- Identify the author of the opinion of the court, dissents, or concurrences
- Identify corresponding article on Wikipedia
- Wikify links to citations to state decisions, statutes, secondary material
- Wikify short form citations or "Id."
Technical information
editI wrote the Wikisource Legal Tool in PHP. It uses XPath to sift through the DOM tree of an HTML page. It can parse OpenJuris, and I have another version that parses some areas of Cornell's Legal Information Institute. This script is just a proof of concept--I wrote it when I should have been studying tax. If you want to help the project, please contact me.