At present, the main legal instrument for the protection of personal data in Belgium is the Data Protection Act dated 8th December 1992. The principles laid down in this act have been further developed by several royal decrees some of which are in the course of adoption at the present time. Work has already begun in Belgium so as to modify the existing Act in accordance with the Directive. The availability of a burgeoning quantity of on-line legal information and the present trend of computer usage in legal practice have created a pressing need for practical systems which can retrieve required pieces of information in a precise fashion and support the use of the retrieved information in legal practice. More particularly we describe a logic programming based information management tool which provides the infrastructure for conceptual retrieval within this combined framework.
Surface approaches to teaching , learning and assessment proliferate within law schools.
Educational technology, embodying hypertext facilities can be used within a strategy to encourage deep learning. The paper describes how by building upon pedagogical principles developed by writers such as Pask and Spiro which are seen to encourage deep learning, hypertext systems within applications in law can be improved so as to facilitate the desired deep learning strategies. This article critically examines approaches to the production of systems of support for discretionary legal decision-making. It discusses a project to research and develop a Sentencing Information System for the High Court in Scotland and examines the wider theoretical implications of work to produce a system to support discretionary decision-making. It then briefly describes the background of the Scottish system and speculates on the present and future positions of the project.