Digithemis is a resource platform that allows researchers, general public, judicial personnel and authorities, to find all information and publications on the Belgian judicial system and its history.
The site is structured in four parts: applications, documentary resources, virtual exhibitions and contributions.
Digithemis is home to three applications which testify a desire to approach the history of justice from multiple and complementary angles:
- its actors and institutions in which they evolve, contained in the prosopographic database of the Belgian judiciary. Covering the period 1795-1962, it contains more than 7900 people and 870 jurisdictions.
- its activity, through the judicial statistics from 1830 to the present day. Cubes application allows, as indicated by his name, generates statistical cubes.
- its sources, namely a bibliographic directory on the history of justice, containing more than 7200 references of which several series are digitized and OCRized.
These applications are the result of research carried out at Centre d’Histoire du Droit et de la Justice (UCL) for many years in collaboration with several universities and research institutions. More information on these different partnerships is available for each application..
Aware of the “black box” aspect that these applications can take on for an external user, a certain amount of documentary resources have been extracted from the applications and made directly available to the public. This tab, shows these resources, which are presented according to the classic distinction between the different sources of law (legislation, doctrine and jurisprudence) to which are added the judicial statistics. You will find, for instance in the "doctrine" sub-menu, that a large number of "Mercuriales" have been digitized and OCRed as well as several colonial legal journals.
Digithemis currently houses two virtual exhibitions: one dedicated to the centenary of Military Security, the other on the “Words of justice”.
Finally, Digithemis collects, in the form of articles, interactive timelines or videos, the contributions of researchers or students devoted to the history of law and justice.