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You are missing the point. Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? Ignorance of the law is no defense, bu

You are missing the point. Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? Ignorance of the law is no defense, but I have to pay to relieve that ignorance? Come on!

wtvanhest 11y ago
Casetext makes the law 100% free...
- kemitchell 11y ago
  Big fan of Jake and his team. Pretty sure they're stuck licensing case data, like everybody else. That means no unrestricted bulk downloads of permissively licensed case data for end users. That data is "free" insofar as you can read it on Casetext without payment. That's great---I do it a lot---but it's a far cry from what Public Resource aimed to do and what Harvard has now promised to do. In some situations, like Lexis Nexis' relationship to the State of California, there were are are already "walled garden" interfaces where you can go to read and download case law one case at a time. That hasn't opened the playing field for viable, comprehensive alternatives to Wexis, which is probably why Wexis can be convinced to offer them. If and when the data become truly open, I can't wait to see where Casetext goes.
tzs 11y ago
> Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? You don't. What you have to purchase through a private party is electronic access to the annotations that the private party adds to the cases. If you just want the public domain cases you don't need to purchase anything from a private party. First, there is PACER [1]. PACER is not free, but it is pretty cheap and it is owned and operated by government, not by a private party. The documents retrieved through PACER are usually public domain, and so once someone gets a particular case they can legally share it. I don't have a link handy, but I believe there are startups that gather together cases contributed this way to build a growing body of PACER material that you can get without having to pay even the small PACER fees. You can also get the material for free at government and school law libraries that are generally open to the public. [1] https://www.pacer.gov https://www.pacer.gov
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  RECAP: https://www.recapthelaw.org/ https://www.recapthelaw.org/ Scraps PACER when you use it, injects the docs into the Internet Archive.
- zekevermillion 11y ago
  PACER is not cheap, nor is it comprehensive. Furthermore, it is not feasible to find out what the law is on PACER. If you already know what cases are important, then you can look them up on PACER I suppose. Or you could go to your local law library (presumably you are a member for a couple hundred bucks a year, right?) and look them up on paper. Why should we need a comprehensive electronically searchable database of casetext or legislation when paper will do just fine? Frankly as a small-time lawyer, your argument that PACER is sufficient or cheap just does not ring true for me. If it did, I wouldn't pay so much for Lexis / Westlaw.
rayiner 11y ago
The laws and legal opinions are public domain. The issue is distribution. Pre-Internet, courts were not in the business of publishing books of their opinions. Making the opinions available at the court house was deemed to be sufficient public access. That treatment was consistent with pretty much every other kind of public record (you had to go into the county clerk's office to view deeds, etc). Post-Internet, many courts publish their opinions online. E.g. the Virginia Supreme Court and Court of Appeals has opinions going back to 1995: http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/home.html http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/home.html. What private parties provide is a value-add. That's what you purchase access to. They spend the money and go to the effort of digitizing, indexing, and annotating, case law and statutes going back a couple of hundred years. No single public entity can do that, because the 51 individual federal and state court systems are part of 51 distinct sovereign entities, and as a practical matter individual courts even within a single sovereign operate largely autonomously of each other.

wtvanhest 11y ago

Casetext makes the law 100% free...

kemitchell 11y ago
Big fan of Jake and his team. Pretty sure they're stuck licensing case data, like everybody else. That means no unrestricted bulk downloads of permissively licensed case data for end users. That data is "free" insofar as you can read it on Casetext without payment. That's great---I do it a lot---but it's a far cry from what Public Resource aimed to do and what Harvard has now promised to do. In some situations, like Lexis Nexis' relationship to the State of California, there were are are already "walled garden" interfaces where you can go to read and download case law one case at a time. That hasn't opened the playing field for viable, comprehensive alternatives to Wexis, which is probably why Wexis can be convinced to offer them. If and when the data become truly open, I can't wait to see where Casetext goes.

tzs 11y ago

> Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? You don't. What you have to purchase through a private party is electronic access to the annotations that the private party adds to the cases. If you just want the public domain cases you don't need to purchase anything from a private party. First, there is PACER [1]. PACER is not free, but it is pretty cheap and it is owned and operated by government, not by a private party. The documents retrieved through PACER are usually public domain, and so once someone gets a particular case they can legally share it. I don't have a link handy, but I believe there are startups that gather together cases contributed this way to build a growing body of PACER material that you can get without having to pay even the small PACER fees. You can also get the material for free at government and school law libraries that are generally open to the public. [1] https://www.pacer.gov https://www.pacer.gov

toomuchtodo 11y ago
RECAP: https://www.recapthelaw.org/ https://www.recapthelaw.org/ Scraps PACER when you use it, injects the docs into the Internet Archive.
zekevermillion 11y ago
PACER is not cheap, nor is it comprehensive. Furthermore, it is not feasible to find out what the law is on PACER. If you already know what cases are important, then you can look them up on PACER I suppose. Or you could go to your local law library (presumably you are a member for a couple hundred bucks a year, right?) and look them up on paper. Why should we need a comprehensive electronically searchable database of casetext or legislation when paper will do just fine? Frankly as a small-time lawyer, your argument that PACER is sufficient or cheap just does not ring true for me. If it did, I wouldn't pay so much for Lexis / Westlaw.

rayiner 11y ago

The laws and legal opinions are public domain. The issue is distribution. Pre-Internet, courts were not in the business of publishing books of their opinions. Making the opinions available at the court house was deemed to be sufficient public access. That treatment was consistent with pretty much every other kind of public record (you had to go into the county clerk's office to view deeds, etc). Post-Internet, many courts publish their opinions online. E.g. the Virginia Supreme Court and Court of Appeals has opinions going back to 1995: http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/home.html http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/home.html. What private parties provide is a value-add. That's what you purchase access to. They spend the money and go to the effort of digitizing, indexing, and annotating, case law and statutes going back a couple of hundred years. No single public entity can do that, because the 51 individual federal and state court systems are part of 51 distinct sovereign entities, and as a practical matter individual courts even within a single sovereign operate largely autonomously of each other.