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1.8 Million US Court Rulings Now Online
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "For a long time now, lawyers and any serious law students have been bound to paid services like LexusNexis for access to case law, but that is slowly changing. Carl Malamud has posted free electronic copies of every U.S. Supreme Court decision and Court of Appeals ruling since 1950, 1.8 million rulings in all, online for free. While the rulings themselves have long been government works not subject to copyright, courts still charge several cents per page for copies and they're inconvenient to access, so lawyers usually turn to legal publishers which are more expensive but more convenient, providing helpful things like notes about related cases, summaries of the holdings, and information about if and when the case was overturned. This free database is not Carl's first, either. He convinced the SEC to provide EDGAR, and helped get both the Smithsonian and Congressional hearings online."
...from Thomson, the provider of Westlaw services:
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/letter_to_west_response.pdf
Seems a pretty reasonable response to his initial query:
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/letter_to_west.pdf
Thus, Thomson is justified in asserting copyright on materials which represent unique, original, or significant contributions to the content, and does not assert any copyright whatever on material which is in the public domain.
And if this work helps provide greater access information which is already publicly, but not easily, available, then it's a Good Thing.
But Westlaw and LexisNexis do a lot more than just make case law available online. There is a lot of editorial work, summarizing, organization, not to mention costs often imposed by the courts themselves, and Carl Malamud correctly acknowledges that.
Now that lawyers can access without charge documents created from the public purse, when should we expect to see these savings trickle down to the public as reduced legal fees?
I think this is a great idea, but from the brief glance at the site that I took, it would appear that is has absolutely no search feature at all. LexusNexxus and the other sites have sophisticated search features. 1.8 million records stored in 1000 pdfs is more or less worthless IMO.
REVERSED AND REMANDED. Moderators, et al concur. IT IS SO ORDERED.
I wonder how fast he's going to get sued by the legal publishers that the article refers to as "more expensive", and thus quite successful and profitable?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Now I can pretend to be a real lawyer, as opposed to a slashdot lawyer.
But I know how to thumb though copies!
I don't see this being used in court, but it's a great resource as much as the public law library is. Law students, people who wish to defend themselves, or just with a strong curiosity can now have a better starting point, if not a better understanding
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
So how is this different than http://www.findlaw.com/ ? I've been using that free site to look through cases ranging from the Supreme Court to individual State courts.
Simply copies of the decisions which were published by the aforementioned courts, then they are as valid as those published by either West or Thompson and can be used in court. Of course you don't get the luxury of the Key Notes, or cross references, but hey, most of the time you only want specific quotes and positions from the body of the decision anyway.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
And now electronic publication of all legal rulings online is mine!
My, the USPTO is gullible.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
paid services like LexusNexis
it's actually LexisNexis.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
accidentally mis-moderated and can't figure otu a better undo than posting logged in
Most courts have law libraries that are open to the public, including free (albiet limited) access to Lexis and/or Westlaw. Seems a better option that perusing thousands of pages of unsearchable data. Still, I applaud the effort to make this stuff accessible from anywhere. Can a legal search engine be the next bit open source project?
MOAR!
meow.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis have similar subscription case reporters in Canada, where they cooexist peacefully with this free site, where you can freely search and read most "recent" Canadian case law (e.g. from the mid 1990s to date), as well as some older important appellate cases. The paid services have more "editorial content" such as detailed headnotes and cross-referencing to commentary.
The single most important thing lawyers want, other than the case itself, is to know what other cases say about it: which subsequent authorities cite the case, and why? The ability to "note up" a case ("Quickcite" on Lexis-Nexis Canada, "Shepardizing" in Westlaw-speak) to see at a glance if it has been followed, overturned or otherwise commented on is a critical feature for any online repository of case law. Until Malamud's site does this it's not true competition to the subscription sites.
As a law student, I'm glad to hear these things are now public. They've always been in the public domain - just never published like this, at least that I'm aware of.
But Lexis and Westlaw will remain exceedingly important and worth their fees. Publishing cases is one thing - publishing the proprietary information that Lexis and Westlaw add (headnotes, the West Key system, Shepard's citations, treatises, and countless other secondary sources) would truly make this useful for attorneys. Of course, maintaining all of these sources requires a huge effort - and is one of the reasons these databases cost as much as they do. (There are, I'm sure, less savory reasons as well, of course.)
I wouldn't count on seeing Lexis and Westlaw go belly up soon - an attorney needs much more than the raw cases. But, like I said, this is very positive for the public.
I got the verdict last Friday in a case I tried myself in federal court: Verdict, Gregerson v. Vilana Financial, Inc.
I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed, but I did all my legal research using Google. The only paid service I used was Pacer, and that only for 2-3 cases. I bought one case from LexisNexis (Pinkham v. Sara Lee, 8th US Circuit), which cost $9.00. In the end, I was awarded $19,462 in damages (and I defeated six claims against me).
I found most of what I needed at Findlaw.com, www.law.cornell.edu. Specific state cases for Minnesota were at state.mn.us/lawlibrary/. I went to a law library only one time, and they didn't have what I needed, and I never went back.
I did get advice from an attorney on legal procedure (stuff not in any book). I would have used LexisNexis or West Law if it wasn't so overpriced ($9.00 for one webpage? All because the case was too old to be on Pacer, where it would cost about 18 cents). I'm going to try out this guy's service in the future.
(a full chronology of my case is here http://www.cgstock.com/essays/vilana))
www.cgstock.com
Since all these cases are now up, is there enough data in there to finally make a directory of lawyers with batting averages , so I can check whether one is actually any good at my kind of case before I hire them?
--
make install -not war
I see my summer reading plans are set! Woot!
They should get Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney to be the site avatar/host now that he's retired.
He should get in contact with Project Gutenberg, that would make a nice volunteer and resource center for this project. Both have the same end goal; to get public domain knowledge freely available.
IANAL, but I'm about to sound a lot more like one.
How much do the other sources of these papers charge? If there isn't a way to search this site and look for one of 1.8 million court rulings then this might be a difficult task.
It also doesn't seem unreasonable to charge a small fee for online publications, I'm pretty sure that ApJ and the like charge at least a little to access their articles (fortunately for me, this is covered for computers on campus).
what's that now?
People sue each other. 1.8 million over a period of 58 years comes to about 31,000 year from a whole lot of courts - not too bad, and not unheard of. If you want to cut down on case law, people will need to stop suing each other. That's not going to happen - and I'm not sure it should. The courts provide a vital means for people to settle disputes without resorting to self-help (i.e. theft, assault, etc.). This isn't even including criminal cases - if you've got a way to stop people committing crimes and appealing their sentences, that's great. Also keep in mind that many of these opinions are as short as a sentence.
There have been, actually, numerous attempts lately to simplify the common law - the restatements of torts, contracts, property, etc. The restatements, however, aren't created by elected officials but a group of law professors, academics, lawyers, and judges. Some states like the restatements and follow them. Some don't - and some legislatures (elected officials) have taken steps to change the common law as in the restatement.
Then there are other areas - the Uniform Commercial code, for example - that have helped to simplify the law. But legislatures still want to tweak these (and with reason).
Then there are other codes, such as the Model Penal Code, for criminal law. The MPC is great and all, but it has its problems as well.
A big problem with these "simplifications" of law, however, are the time required to create them. It can take decades for the ALI to come to a decision on matters and publish a restatement. A legislature can do the same job much more quickly.
As someone who tried very hard to study law before attempting to enter law school, I learned that almost all court decisions fall back to previous court decisions, commonly known as case law. It was prohibitively expensive for me to access some (all) of the sites listed in TFS, which was the first step of many that has since caused me to lose faith in the way laws are implemented today.
Thank you Carl Malamud for doing your part in providing public access to crucial knowledge about our laws!
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I thought I checked the spelling of that very specifically, too. Somehow, I always think of the car instead of them...
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
The big problem with the restatements is that they are not the result of legislative input.
On the other hand, the restatements also cover areas that legislatures have often not covered in their own proceedings - areas of law that have traditionally been left to the common law and which the people have, apparently, seen no need to change. But when the people - through the legislature - do change them, the people obviously have the power to overrule the restatements.
If it's just SCOTUS decisions you're after, Cornell's Legal Information Institute has been around for years.
Carl Malamud is the best thing since scroll wheels.
If only the federal government would puclish the Code of Federal Regulations and United States Code.
Of course, they would have to live by them, instead of making shit up when they put someone on trial, which is why the federal laws will never be published.
They claim the laws are online at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/ but a search will show that 80% of the CFR and USC are actually missing. This way, a poor schlub is accused of breaking a non-existent law by a para-military storm trooper who is too ignorant to know what the Constitution says. The poor schlub protests his innocence, and is knocked to the floor by the bailiff. A few kicks later, he still protests his innocence. If he's lucky enough to be liked by the gestapo, he'll get a trial. (90% of us who ask for a trial are falsely entered as guilt pleas.) During the show trial, he's refused his right to know what he's accused of. All the defense evidence is suppressed, while the prosecutor grand-stands. (Remember, the prosecutor's office is paying the public defenders. Guess what happens to the ones that actually defend someone.) 90% of jurys convict at this point, but the ones that don't (who will never be called for jury duty again) ask for the law. The prosecutor and judge spend a few days whipping up bullshit to sound like a law, and present it to the jury.
At least this was my experience with the courts in the earl 1990's.
So you see, the CFR & USC will NEVER be published by the federal government.
Andy
Maybe if an attorney had to look at the raw cases all the time there would be a grass roots legal movement to simplify law rather than constantly add to it.
I propose a new amendment to the Constitution of the USA, all laws have to be written so the average person can read and understand it in 5 minutes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That O'Reilly story is over a year old; the REAL news is much more recent. As Lawrence Lessig reports, Malmud's resource.org and Lessig's CC have together purchased a database with a substantial portion of all federal cases. The group has made the data available xml format free for developers to use as they wish. See the resource.org press release at http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/0_Press_20080211.pdf
I train LexisNexis and Lexis users. Most of y'all have no idea how powerful and sophisticated the LexisNexis -- and more so, Westlaw -- search engines are. This is a homework problem I used to give: Find several court cases in which the guest of a tenant leaned against a porch rail, fell off the porch when the rail collapsed, and sued the landlord.
This shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.
Beside the selection issue already mentioned.
If you want the battling average, who is going to call the strikes and balls?
I don't know how many opinions you had read, but often it's far from clear who is the "winning" side without extensive research into all the circumstance surround a particular case.
It's not uncommon for an opinion to end with "Affirmed in part 1,3, 7, reversed in part 2, 4, and 8, with the rest remanded in part to lower court with the following instructions."
So who really had won? It really depends.
Or in a case I am somewhat familiar with, a family hired a lawyer to fight against a low-ball eminent domain case. The property was taken, but the compensation was triple the original offer, which some people would consider fair or more than fair. Is that ball or strike?
I don't think it's wise to shoehorn complex and complicate issues into simple numbers.
I was more of an EBSCO man as an undergraduate, so my experience with that side of Lexis was pretty slim, but from what I know there are a lot of differences. Lexis used by law students/lawyers contains all of the same information from periodicals, but also contains tons and tons of case law, legal treatises, Shepard's citations, and other information which an undergrad isn't likely to find to be useful.
It is a good thing to give the public access to these materials. Your average citizen is not going to sign up for Lexis or Westlaw just to do some heavy legal reading. I know that depending on the size of the firm we are easily talking about five figures PER MONTH for those services.
But when I looked at the website it is obvious that this is not user friendly at all. From what I could tell, the files are either image pdf files or compressed in a tar.bz2 file. I doubt if more than 5% (I am being real generous here) of lawyers have any idea how to unpack that. (windows BZip2 for those who want a graphic interface)
I presume that somebody will OCR it and load it onto a Google-searchable website so the content can be found. Otherwise, this is just an exercise.