Slashdot Mirror
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Tweets Rulings
Landing an accepted submission, notanymore writes "The PA Supreme Court now has a Twitter account to post rulings and opinions. How could this be a bad thing? It's progression toward making public information more easily accessible. Some argue that it's public shaming but isn't it the same as a newspaper reporting on local crime?"
These are just links to rulings and opinions on the courts web site, not tweeting the actual details. Nothing to see here. The information itself is as accessible as it always was, although they have provided a marginally more convenient way to access it as soon as it is posted.
Newspapers are privately owned, too.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Because newspapers are not privately owned nor monetized? Are you an idiot?
All they are posting are links to their own website. What is the problem?
Will they be also tweeting things like "the opinion of this court is not available to Public"?
People who want to cheer the downfall of the USA, you can cheer, the soul of that country as envisioned by its founder is dead.
On another topic, Twitter. Bullshit artificial limitation (yeah yeah length of an SMS. What percentage of Twitterers actually use SMS instead of fancy-schmanscy smartphone anyway?) but popular because everyone else is using it...
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Supreme Courts don't examine criminal cases to determine the Truth. They almost never examine them for anything but findings of law: was the case tried in good accordance with all criminal and trial laws that applied? If they think it was, the lower court rulings stand. If they think it wasn't, they direct the lower court to retry the case or some such thing. Supreme Court decisions don't examine or comment on whether the accused is guilty or innocent, and they don't even care 'what really happened' or 'who the real killer was'.
As such it's awfully difficult to imagine many cases in which their decisions could bring shame to anyone except a bad lawyer.
How is posting a link to their webpage "lambasting" someone?
... isn't it the same as a newspaper reporting on local crime?
No, because it's done via computer. One of the general rules is that no matter how well something is understood, and how much settled law or custom there is on a topic, as soon as a computer gets involved, all this is forgotten, and everything has to be discussed (and sometimes fought to the death) from scratch.
We've been through this process a zillion times, every time some traditional activity involves a computer for the first time. The traditional metaphors don't work, because the mere presence of a computer cancels all human memory, and everything we knew must be relearned.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
really living up to your handle there, pal
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
How do you explain a judgement in an SMS message?
I could see a Google+ or Facebook page for publishing rulings, but tweets?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Anything that makes court opinions more accessible is a good thing. Your concern about "privately owned services" is about 200 years too late and ignorant of the way court opinions are presently published.
The present system is WestLaw Lexis or another legal publishing company publishes decisions of note, i.e. only decision that change something in the law. Your average case is never published. You have to pay major money to get access to this material.
The courts do store decisions but in such a difficult way to access that it is not worth the effort. Are you going to go and wait in line for a civil service person to go and get the physical copy of the official court opinion, every time you want to see it? Imagine trying to get hundreds of documents from the DMV everyday. And then paying photocopying services because the official court document cannot leave the file storage room.
How is this lambasting someone? It's public information. This information is available already as you say via other broadcast media. With the exception of accounts getting hacked, surely this ensures a degree of unbiased information. How is that a bad thing?
This is amazing me. Justices don't write their decisions in pencil, right? So how hard is it to PDF the decision and upload it somewhere?
These legacy locks the Old Boys have on content are amazing. I can see some of the exhibits waiting, but the court decision should be a snap. It's like "Select all court decisions this month --> Convert to PDF". The day someone break the bar's lock on pricing is the day we get fairness in law.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
http://www.aopc.org/T/SupremeCourt/SupremePostings.htm
It looks like the State of Pennsylvania does this. (Though they do limit the searches to separate types of court, e.g. Supreme Court vs Commonwealth Court rulings).
Because newspapers are not privately owned nor monetized? Are you an idiot?
I think the difference is that the court is posting to twitter, rather than an employee of a newspaper reporting the information. Doesn't really matter much as long as the tweets don't replace some other kind of transparency process the court was using.
I could see some twitter competitor potentially suing the court for giving twitter an unfair advantage or something along those lines.
Also, don't get falsely accused of doing anything wrong. Also, don't do anything right that the idiots in the various legislatures have decided to make illegal.
In any case, our society has specifically implemented public shaming in the form of violent and sexual offender websites for some time now. No point whining about twitter at this late date; the precedent was set some time ago, has been to the supreme court, and found not wanting (by complete idiots, but hey, when has *that* ever mattered?)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So how hard is it to PDF the decision and upload it somewhere?
As hard as ignoring the legal fraternity lobby who would rather people pay them to look up information in legal documents rather than download it for free from the net.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
So how hard is it to PDF the decision and upload it somewhere?
Right. Here in the UK, our supreme court publishes all of its decisions on its own web site, and they are typically up within a day or two. Why do other courts not do the same thing?
or perhaps an RSS feed served by their own web server under their control?
Yes, an RSS feed is the right answer. It would probably take 2 years to get set up in a government agency. Twitter feed was available by the secretary making an account.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)