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1.8 Million US Court Rulings Now Online

Posted by samzenpus on from the star-wars-kid-v.-lol-cats dept.

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."

8 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. So.... by fictionpuss · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

  2. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    REVERSED AND REMANDED. Moderators, et al concur. IT IS SO ORDERED.

  3. yay by pak9rabid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now I can pretend to be a real lawyer, as opposed to a slashdot lawyer.

  4. Sorry, I already patented this process by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2, Funny

    And now electronic publication of all legal rulings online is mine!

    My, the USPTO is gullible.

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    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  5. Re:not to nitpick, but... by magarity · · Score: 2, Funny

    Were you driven to point that out?

  6. IANAL by PhasmatisApparatus · · Score: 2, Funny

    IANAL, but I'm about to sound a lot more like one.

  7. Re:New Court Ruling by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2, Funny

    but the possibility of unqualified opinion and wikiculture impacting law may be an unpleasant risk... ). If there were a way to get qualified people to lead content creation as you suggest and produce quality at least as high as LN or Westlaw, that would be positive...

    I found a group of highly knowledgable legal experts who don't mind sharing their expertise online for free.

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    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  8. simplifying law by falconwolf · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

    Falcon
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    Should there be a Law?