EUROTORT – New implementation of the database of European case law on tort law

EUROTORT is a cooperation project with the Institute for European Tort Law (ETL) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The ACDH-CH is responsible for the technical reimplementation of the database.

EuroTort is the first comprehensive database of European cases on tort law! This web-based research tool shall allow both researchers as well as practitioners to access the vast wealth of jurisprudence on tort law throughout Europe in a single language (English) and with a standardized index system. While there are of course national databases giving access to court cases, they are limited both by language and by focus, since they lack the cross-border perspective that only EUROTORT offers. With a single search string, the most important aspects of tort law can be researched either in any one of the jurisdictions covered, in a selection of countries or without geographical limitation. At present, the collection contains almost 1,500 decisions from 26 European countries, all categorized and indexed. You can search by jurisdiction, time period, keywords, full text, or a combination thereof. The materials stem from cases reported in the “Tort and Insurance Law Yearbook” series, co-published by the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL) and the Research Unit for European Tort Law of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, as well as in the “Digest of European Tort Law” series of the latter institution.

In the current project, the outdated application is being completely revised and adapted to current technical standards. To this end, the data from the old application is being migrated to a PostgreSQL database and the data model is being adapted to improve the usability of the data records. A web application implemented using Django now enables unrestricted access to the data and also allows registered users to enter new data records.