The Legal Information System (LIS) of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) seeks to improve public access to the laws and other legal authority of the FSM and its four states. This LIS Project strives to do so by increasing accessibility to the constitutions, statutes, selected court rules and decisions, and selected rules and regulations of the FSM National Government and the four state governments of Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap.
The overall objectives of the TA are to assist the FSM national and state governments to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the legal system by making existing and future laws more available to the public and by advancing public understanding of the legal system.
The TA is broken down into two primary parts, one is the Legal Information System provided mainly through this web site and the other is a program of community education on various aspects of the local legal system that is being undertaken by the Micronesian Seminar. The community education component will be carried out using radio and video programs, as well as distributed written material.
This LIS portion of the project includes the following main components:
complete codification work to update the existing codes of the FSM, Kosrae, and Yap, and assist in the enactment and/or printing of new codes for Chuuk and Pohnpei;
create an
LIS web site containing the codes and constitutions that will be fully searchable, with links to other reference documents and related web sites, as well as containing cross-references within a document;
post selected regulations of the national and four state governments over the LIS web site;
train local staff to update, improve, and expand upon the content of the LIS web site; and
create a public education program on accessing the information provided by this web site.
It is hoped that the entire FSM community will benefit by having greater access to basic legal reference materials. Residents throughout the FSM, as well as students and other FSM citizens studying, residing, or employed abroad should be able to obtain free public access to legal reference materials over this web site.
This site should also be useful as a research tool for the states of the FSM to compare legislative and regulatory approaches to problems, as often circumstances in the states are similar and solutions to problems can often be discovered by looking at how others have dealt with them. Other positive spin-off effects of this web site are anticipated.
The legal reference materials provided on
this LIS web site are provided as a public service, and while the
LIS Project has made every attempt, within its limited
resources and staffing, to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of the
content of this web site, there will be times between updates when
content will not be current. Also due to the large volume of
material, and the technical and manpower demands of converting this
material into a form usable over the Internet, portions of this
material may have been incorrectly inputted, converted, reproduced
or transmitted. Please see the Disclaimer page of this web site
before using the reference material and for more detailed information
on its limitations.
The main office of the LIS Project is located in the FSM Supreme Court building at the National Capitol in Palikir,
Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia.
The LIS Project would appreciate receiving any suggestions, comments, or identification of any errors found on this web site. Please go to the Contact the LIS Project page for project contact numbers and addresses.
|