In the age of Internet, discussions about the federal government and its functions are informed by and rely on our unprecedented access to federal documents. Anyone can freely view public records online, such as proposed Congressional legislation and presidential executive orders. Accessing public court documents, however, is a bit trickier. As Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2011, "no aspect of government remains more locked down than the secretive, hierarchical judicial branch."
While the courts resist digital transparency an initiative led by the Free Law Project, RECAP, works to unveil the court's "secrets". Why, and how? Perhaps we should start with some background on how courts share their documents with the public.
On February 14th the United States Congress's subcommitee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet held an oversight hearing on "Judicial Transparency and Ethics". One of the primary topics for discussion was the Public Access to Court Electronic Records database, commonly referred to as PACER. PACER is the federal courts' primary database utilized by lawyers, journalists, academics, and anyone else wanting or needing to view court documents.
While technically public, these documents are not so accessible. There are numerous fees for using the PACER database. It costs money to search the database, and even more money to view the actual documents — $.10 for every page of search results, and to view any given document is another $.10 per page.
These small fees add up. Estimating that the total cost to view all of PACER's documents would be one billion dollars, organizations like the Free Law Project are understandably concerned about the way in which these fees affect accessibility. The government maintains that the cost of using PACER is necessary to pay for the system's maintenance and upkeep, but it appears that PACER generates an extra 80 million dollars beyond than their overhead.
Read more
http://boingboing.net/2017/02/21/federal-courts-resist-transpar.html#more-511203
This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
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Unfortunately, the Free Law Project has decided to charge other organizations money to access RECAP documents, and it now denies access to organizations which refuse to pay. The new version of the RECAP plug-in only uploads documents to the FLP's own CourtListener site, while other sites, such as PlainSite and the United States Courts Archive, are no longer being updated. This decision was made in secret with no public discussion, and it was made despite the FLP's stated position that court documents should be free and freely available to everyone. For more information, please see https://www.plainsite.org/articles/20171130/why-plainsite-no-longer-supports-the-recap-initiative/
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