How it is kept
- Every table is exported as sorted text files under version control, so every change to a law is a line in the history.
- Every row records the page of the Centre it was read from, so each text can be traced to its source.
The database
All of Lebanese law, as one database.
The library behind this site is a relational PostgreSQL database. This page describes its tables.
Download it free. The whole database is public on Hugging Face: taktekhq/lebanese-legislation. One Parquet file per table, including the graph of how texts amend and cite each other. Load it with pandas, DuckDB or the datasets library. The tables below are the ones behind every page of this site, with their live row counts. Questions: [email protected].
agreement- Treaties and agreements, with the text that ratified them. (1,973 rows)
amendment- Every change one text made to another, read from the amending article: which article, what it did, the new wording, from what date, and whether it was applied. (3,729 rows)
article_version- Each amended article's versions, oldest first, each with its date and the amendment that made it. (3,707 rows)
code- The principal codes, with stable addresses. (24 rows)
court- The courts and chambers. (12 rows)
doctrine_article- Articles from legal periodicals, with abstracts. (2,574 rows)
gazette_entry- Which texts each issue published, on which page. (104,049 rows)
gazette_issue- Official Gazette issues. (6,808 rows)
graph_edge- (268,420 rows)
legislation- Every law, decree and decision: kind, number, date, title, status, Official Gazette publication. (101,559 rows)
legislation_article- Each article, consolidated, in Arabic and in French where published, with its amendment notes. (384,928 rows)
legislation_kind- The 49 kinds of text, with English and French names. (50 rows)
legislation_section- Books, parts, chapters and sections, nested. (108,991 rows)
opinion- Advisory opinions. (3,633 rows)
reference- Every link from a document to a text or article, and whether the Centre's editors, our rules or a model made it. (20,960 rows)
research- Studies. (50 rows)
ruling- Court rulings: court, number, date, panel, text. (47,615 rows)
source_page- The raw page behind every row: address, archive path, SHA-256. (265,771 rows)
Examples
Every article of the Code of Obligations and Contracts that mentions «التضامن», with a ready citation:
SELECT number, citation, text_ar
FROM article_cited
WHERE law_id = 244226
AND search_stem @@ websearch_to_tsquery('arabic', 'التضامن')
ORDER BY position;
The texts most often cited by the Court of Cassation, with how many rulings cite each:
SELECT l.title, count(DISTINCT r.from_id) AS rulings FROM reference r JOIN legislation l ON l.id = r.law_id JOIN ruling x ON x.id = r.from_id AND r.from_type = 'ruling' WHERE x.court LIKE 'تمييز%' GROUP BY l.title ORDER BY rulings DESC LIMIT 20;
Every text that repealed another, and what it repealed:
SELECT a.title AS repealing, b.title AS repealed FROM reference r JOIN legislation a ON a.id = r.from_id JOIN legislation b ON b.id = r.law_id WHERE r.from_type = 'legislation' AND r.relation = 'repeals';
Where it comes from
Every row records the page of the Lebanese University's Centre for Legal Informatics it was read from, with the SHA-256 of the page as served (source_page). Links between documents say who made them: the Centre's editors, our parser, or an AI model (reference.method).
Licence and credit
We don't own this data. The laws, rulings and Gazette issues are public texts of the Lebanese state, and the Lebanese University's مركز الدراسات والأبحاث في المعلوماتية القانونية collected and published them. We read them from the Centre's public site and add no rights or restrictions of our own. If you reuse them, credit the Centre: Source: Centre for Research and Studies in Legal Informatics, Lebanese University.