7 ms·

US Supreme Court will require electronic filings and post them free online

259 points by scott00 9y ago

clamprecht 9y ago
What will pro se prisoners do? I assume there's some provision for that. If not, they can't even appeal the rule itself!
- burkaman 9y ago
  > Parties representing themselves will have their filings uploaded by the court's staff.
avs733 9y ago
This seems like an unmitigated good. The law, in all forms, should be freely and publicly accessible[1]. Part of me struggles with the abject misunderstandings about law I see in both the media and the public...legal jargon and process are inherently dense/anachronistic. That being said, this seems like an opportunity both for SCOTUS to role model transparency and to try and shorten the process by which the interpretation of the sacred texts are communicated to the people. [1] this includes things like building codes and professional standards which while legally in the public domain are still claimed as copyright and sold by organizations like the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The EFF has some resources on this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/law-belongs-public-domain https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/law-belongs-public-dom...
- wahern 9y ago
  This seems like an unmitigated good. I agree that this material should be freely accessible. But I don't think it will result in unmitigated good. It will add fuel to the fire of academic legal discourse, which has been an increasingly destabilizing influence that has contributed to the politicalization and polarization of legal discourse and broader social discourse. We'll soon see dozens, perhaps hundreds of academic papers purporting to apply statistical analysis and machine learning techniques to this new fount of material. This "data" will be used to support whatever pet theories the academics have concocted. Rather than make the law less opaque to the citizenry, this junk science will become fodder for broader social and political commentary. Maybe improved access to the new filings will makes things better overall. Maybe the resulting fodder will make things worse overall. More than likely we'll just end up in a much more complex world heading down the same road we would have otherwise. In any event, I wouldn't call this unmitigated. Note that my criticism is largely predicated on the fact that this is Supreme Court material. Neither academics nor social pundits have yet figured out how to mine prosaic material like building codes.[1] I wouldn't rule it out, but consider that this more prosaic material has at least as much raw substance as Supreme Court filings. The SCOTUS filings will be abused because of the meaning we imbue. You'll know all the academic papers coming out in the next few years will be bollocks precisely because, relatively speaking, these filings don't add much new substance overall. At best we should only expect this new accessibility to help budding Supreme Court litigators and other similarly niche domains. For more abstract domains the new material shouldn't move the needle; but it doubtlessly will. [1] To be sure, there are papers that do mine this material. Their relative paucity is probably a testament to their quality.
  - eli 9y ago
    Having access to raw data is bad because people could intentionally misinterpret it?
    - MaulingMonkey 9y ago
      That's one way to misinterpret what wahern is saying ;) Having access to raw data is not an unmitigated good because people could (and will) intentionally misinterpret it. It might be still be good on the balance - but there will be a variety of other consequences, good and bad, intended and unintended. Wahern's point seems to be more that it's far too early to call what the balance of all those consequences might be, and that it's not even a given that they'll be more good than bad - nevermind to make the leap to assume they'll all be good. Cheaper than ever, barrier-free communication across the globe has it's advantages, for example - but this also leads to spammers and robocallers. I've wondered if some kind of small cost increase per call or email would help keep such things in better check.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - tenebrisalietum 9y ago
        http://imgur.com/a/LbARM http://imgur.com/a/LbARM
        MaulingMonkey 9y ago
        "In better check", not "solve", for many reasons. And "wondered if", not "attempted to impose", for many of the same.
    - wahern 9y ago
      I'm not saying that having access to the raw data will be absolutely bad. I'm saying that bad things will happen because people will intentionally misinterpret it. I support free access to cryptography not because I think cryptography is an unmitigated good. It has and will be used for bad things. I support it because, at least in principle, I believe the good uses will outweigh the bad uses. And I will continue holding that belief absent substantial evidence to the contrary. Similar situation here. But while many people intuitively understand that cryptography can be used for bad purposes, it's not obvious that simply improving the accessibility of Supreme Court filings could lead to anything bad. But it can and it will. Like in many other fields, law professors are under intense pressure to produce scholarship. The problem is, the law isn't like biology or chemistry. There are few if any readily ascertainable universal principles--at least, few that are more concrete than philosophy generally. It's not even like economics or sociology--which I respect even though there's much junk science there, as well--which are still amenable to material predictions, controlled experiments, and falsifiable hypotheses. For these and many other reasons, the law just isn't a suitable subject for the kind of meaningful, scientific analysis professors purport to apply. At least, not with the analytical tools typically used. The law is a mishmash of abstraction and exception, and the contours are fundamentally random and path dependent. Yet legal scholarship is increasingly expected to extrapolate substance from these random contours. Professors happily oblige. Moreover, scholarship doesn't win you many points unless it's controversial or seemingly up-ends established views. Basically, there are intense internal pressures for scholarship to fit certain narratives. And because of the obvious parallels between the law and politics, the scholarship is weaponized by think tanks and pundits to enhance the credibility of their social and political arguments. It's one reason why Paul Ryan can believe himself a "policy wonk". Not that he isn't an analytical person or that I think his ideas are bad. But it's a preposterous notion that anybody in his position could have access to the kind of hard, relevant data and substantive analysis that good legislative and legal policy could just fall out as matter of course. That if you just studied this stuff enough the answers fall out. The flow of legal scholarship, much like some economic scholarship, is what permits this delusional equivocation between a national policymaker and a scientist in a lab or a quant running a trading platform. What I object to is the charade. And I think the charade is harmful, though not necessarily so harmful that we should do things like prevent the publication of court materials. FWIW, I went to law school mid-career. Best decision I ever made even though I returned to programming. And it was incredibly intellectually stimulating, both the hard legal education, as well as the more abstract policy discourse. But I came away with an abiding belief that the policy discourse has become unproductive in many ways, and this is compounded by how papers and "research" are misused; the work product is considered by many pundits, and even held out by professors and schools, as more scientifically rigorous and empirically grounded than it really is. When the debate is internal and you're discussing things with subject-matter experts, you can sort of expect people to be better able at calling out bullshit; groundless ideas are more likely to die quickly. Plus, lawyers are trained to bullshit, or at least push an argument as far as they possibly can. They're trained to work in a uniquely adversarial system where the opposing side often has the burden of disproving your argument. I don't think lawyers are more insincere than scientists, but when a lawyer is invested in an idea he's very capable at supporting it with strong analytical arguments, papering over the holes. Typical scientific discourse and peer review is far too timid by comparison. When this discourse leaks out into the wider world--indeed, when you're incentivized to pander to the demands and curiosities of the wider world in your discourse--things get out of control. And it has.
- will_brown 9y ago
  Electronic filing systems, and freely searchable dockets/filings have been available by various clerk of courts for sometime. Some of these clerk of courts also include public record searches, which I have used for deeds and other publicly recorded documents. Other record offices can be separate offices from the clerk of courts. Unfortunately, clerk of court systems (online or off) are neither universal, integrated or interoperable. And though you might think SCOTUS would take the opportunity as you say, they are about the slowest moving and beholden to tradition of all the courts (as evidenced by them developing this late in the game or still not allowing video of hearings).
  - rayiner 9y ago
    I'm on the side of Scalia here. If I had my druthers nothing would ever be televised, only available as transcript. Video as a medium makes people stupid (see, e.g., the modern web).
    - will_brown 9y ago
      I'd probably enjoy a lot of the non verbal communication of the Justices and counsel, but you and Scalia are in good company. Its not a well know issue but one people are very sincere about. And I'm not knocking the Court when I say it's slow moving and beholden to tradition, not everything is meant to move fast and break.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        If it serves as consolation, the Ninth Circuit already has an YouTube channel[1], of which I'm a frequent viewer. For some good back-and-forth, I recommend watching hearings with Judge Kozinski. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
k-mcgrady 9y ago
OT: The Supreme Court in the UK has a YouTube channel [1] where videos of judgements are posted (usually very soon after they take place). I'd be interested to know if the SCOTUS has a similar service. I can't find it on YouTube but maybe they can be accessed elsewhere? [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/UKSupremeCourt https://www.youtube.com/user/UKSupremeCourt Edit: Thanks to the below commenters.
- phonon 9y ago
  The 9th Circuit (an appeals court right below the Supreme Court) puts their cases on youtube also. https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc/videos?flow=grid&sort=p&view=0 https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc/videos?flow=grid&sort=p... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObZDipKRH0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObZDipKRH0c is somewhat infamous :-)
- xythian 9y ago
  SCOTUS somewhat famously only allows audio recordings of proceedings. https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2016 https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2... https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/case-allowing-cameras-supreme-court-proceedings/316876/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/case-al...
  - DINKDINK 9y ago
    Point for debate: Between the extremes of transparency and commodification where should we strike the publication balance? e.g. If an organization/individual has ulterior motives (of fears) for testifying in a case other than the limited outcome of the legal question, it has the ability to sway their testimony.
  - avs733 9y ago
    We don't want to see Justice Thomas sleeping during arguments do we?
    - bpodgursky 9y ago
piker 9y ago
While this idea seems great, requiring court staff to submit pro se litigants' petitions may be a non-trivial burden. Something like 40% of federal appellate work is responding to (often meritless, often incomprehensible) pro se habeas petitions[0]. I wonder if a side effect of this is additional legislation intended to dampen that burden[1] at the expense of real human liberty. I hope not, but we should balance this issue and be cautious about chilling less fortunate peoples' access to these basic civil mechanisms. [0] http://www.lclark.edu/live/files/777 http://www.lclark.edu/live/files/777 [1] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiterrorism_and_Effective_Death_Penalty_Act_of_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiterrorism_and_Effective_De...
- perpetualcrayon 9y ago
  I get the feeling that (if I understand this correctly) maybe by putting the petitions out into the open for the world to see (by making it easy for anyone to review online) will cut down on the meritless petitions. After all, it's one thing to throw shit against a wall to see if it will stick (especially if it's a wall in DC that very few people ever look at), and an entirely different thing to throw shit against every wall in the entire US to see if it will stick, and not come out looking like a complete jackass.
- avs733 9y ago
  I think you argument...especially [1] is reasonable and fair. My response would be that much of that non-trivial burden seems largely created by the system, in an evolutionary biology sense they are defenses that have become defects, not inherent defects. This should seem like an opportunity for constructive reform...whether that is me being overly principled and idealistic is TBD.
- azernik 9y ago
  1. This is the Supreme Court. It doesn't get random pro se petitions, it gets appeals and certain politically sensitive cases. 2. Court staff already have to deal with this paperwork, they just have to deal with it in paper. This is requiring litigants to submit their filings in electronic form, which would then be automatically added to a publically queriable database. It also saves a lot of pain for lawyers - those I know would love to avoid submitting everything on dead trees, if only their local behind-the-times court would get on board.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
So SCOTUS runs its own system and the rest of the federal courts lock their public records behind the PACER paywall. Very consistent.
- Larrikin 9y ago
  Its crazy to me that it is legal for there to be a regular fee for viewing a website per view.

259 points by scott00 9y ago

What will pro se prisoners do? I assume there's some provision for that. If not, they can't even appeal the rule itself!

burkaman 9y ago
> Parties representing themselves will have their filings uploaded by the court's staff.

avs733 9y ago

This seems like an unmitigated good. The law, in all forms, should be freely and publicly accessible[1]. Part of me struggles with the abject misunderstandings about law I see in both the media and the public...legal jargon and process are inherently dense/anachronistic. That being said, this seems like an opportunity both for SCOTUS to role model transparency and to try and shorten the process by which the interpretation of the sacred texts are communicated to the people. [1] this includes things like building codes and professional standards which while legally in the public domain are still claimed as copyright and sold by organizations like the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The EFF has some resources on this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/law-belongs-public-domain https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/law-belongs-public-dom...

wahern 9y ago
This seems like an unmitigated good. I agree that this material should be freely accessible. But I don't think it will result in unmitigated good. It will add fuel to the fire of academic legal discourse, which has been an increasingly destabilizing influence that has contributed to the politicalization and polarization of legal discourse and broader social discourse. We'll soon see dozens, perhaps hundreds of academic papers purporting to apply statistical analysis and machine learning techniques to this new fount of material. This "data" will be used to support whatever pet theories the academics have concocted. Rather than make the law less opaque to the citizenry, this junk science will become fodder for broader social and political commentary. Maybe improved access to the new filings will makes things better overall. Maybe the resulting fodder will make things worse overall. More than likely we'll just end up in a much more complex world heading down the same road we would have otherwise. In any event, I wouldn't call this unmitigated. Note that my criticism is largely predicated on the fact that this is Supreme Court material. Neither academics nor social pundits have yet figured out how to mine prosaic material like building codes.[1] I wouldn't rule it out, but consider that this more prosaic material has at least as much raw substance as Supreme Court filings. The SCOTUS filings will be abused because of the meaning we imbue. You'll know all the academic papers coming out in the next few years will be bollocks precisely because, relatively speaking, these filings don't add much new substance overall. At best we should only expect this new accessibility to help budding Supreme Court litigators and other similarly niche domains. For more abstract domains the new material shouldn't move the needle; but it doubtlessly will. [1] To be sure, there are papers that do mine this material. Their relative paucity is probably a testament to their quality.
- eli 9y ago
  Having access to raw data is bad because people could intentionally misinterpret it?
  - MaulingMonkey 9y ago
    That's one way to misinterpret what wahern is saying ;) Having access to raw data is not an unmitigated good because people could (and will) intentionally misinterpret it. It might be still be good on the balance - but there will be a variety of other consequences, good and bad, intended and unintended. Wahern's point seems to be more that it's far too early to call what the balance of all those consequences might be, and that it's not even a given that they'll be more good than bad - nevermind to make the leap to assume they'll all be good. Cheaper than ever, barrier-free communication across the globe has it's advantages, for example - but this also leads to spammers and robocallers. I've wondered if some kind of small cost increase per call or email would help keep such things in better check.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - tenebrisalietum 9y ago
      http://imgur.com/a/LbARM http://imgur.com/a/LbARM
      - MaulingMonkey 9y ago
        "In better check", not "solve", for many reasons. And "wondered if", not "attempted to impose", for many of the same.
  - wahern 9y ago
    I'm not saying that having access to the raw data will be absolutely bad. I'm saying that bad things will happen because people will intentionally misinterpret it. I support free access to cryptography not because I think cryptography is an unmitigated good. It has and will be used for bad things. I support it because, at least in principle, I believe the good uses will outweigh the bad uses. And I will continue holding that belief absent substantial evidence to the contrary. Similar situation here. But while many people intuitively understand that cryptography can be used for bad purposes, it's not obvious that simply improving the accessibility of Supreme Court filings could lead to anything bad. But it can and it will. Like in many other fields, law professors are under intense pressure to produce scholarship. The problem is, the law isn't like biology or chemistry. There are few if any readily ascertainable universal principles--at least, few that are more concrete than philosophy generally. It's not even like economics or sociology--which I respect even though there's much junk science there, as well--which are still amenable to material predictions, controlled experiments, and falsifiable hypotheses. For these and many other reasons, the law just isn't a suitable subject for the kind of meaningful, scientific analysis professors purport to apply. At least, not with the analytical tools typically used. The law is a mishmash of abstraction and exception, and the contours are fundamentally random and path dependent. Yet legal scholarship is increasingly expected to extrapolate substance from these random contours. Professors happily oblige. Moreover, scholarship doesn't win you many points unless it's controversial or seemingly up-ends established views. Basically, there are intense internal pressures for scholarship to fit certain narratives. And because of the obvious parallels between the law and politics, the scholarship is weaponized by think tanks and pundits to enhance the credibility of their social and political arguments. It's one reason why Paul Ryan can believe himself a "policy wonk". Not that he isn't an analytical person or that I think his ideas are bad. But it's a preposterous notion that anybody in his position could have access to the kind of hard, relevant data and substantive analysis that good legislative and legal policy could just fall out as matter of course. That if you just studied this stuff enough the answers fall out. The flow of legal scholarship, much like some economic scholarship, is what permits this delusional equivocation between a national policymaker and a scientist in a lab or a quant running a trading platform. What I object to is the charade. And I think the charade is harmful, though not necessarily so harmful that we should do things like prevent the publication of court materials. FWIW, I went to law school mid-career. Best decision I ever made even though I returned to programming. And it was incredibly intellectually stimulating, both the hard legal education, as well as the more abstract policy discourse. But I came away with an abiding belief that the policy discourse has become unproductive in many ways, and this is compounded by how papers and "research" are misused; the work product is considered by many pundits, and even held out by professors and schools, as more scientifically rigorous and empirically grounded than it really is. When the debate is internal and you're discussing things with subject-matter experts, you can sort of expect people to be better able at calling out bullshit; groundless ideas are more likely to die quickly. Plus, lawyers are trained to bullshit, or at least push an argument as far as they possibly can. They're trained to work in a uniquely adversarial system where the opposing side often has the burden of disproving your argument. I don't think lawyers are more insincere than scientists, but when a lawyer is invested in an idea he's very capable at supporting it with strong analytical arguments, papering over the holes. Typical scientific discourse and peer review is far too timid by comparison. When this discourse leaks out into the wider world--indeed, when you're incentivized to pander to the demands and curiosities of the wider world in your discourse--things get out of control. And it has.
will_brown 9y ago
Electronic filing systems, and freely searchable dockets/filings have been available by various clerk of courts for sometime. Some of these clerk of courts also include public record searches, which I have used for deeds and other publicly recorded documents. Other record offices can be separate offices from the clerk of courts. Unfortunately, clerk of court systems (online or off) are neither universal, integrated or interoperable. And though you might think SCOTUS would take the opportunity as you say, they are about the slowest moving and beholden to tradition of all the courts (as evidenced by them developing this late in the game or still not allowing video of hearings).
- rayiner 9y ago
  I'm on the side of Scalia here. If I had my druthers nothing would ever be televised, only available as transcript. Video as a medium makes people stupid (see, e.g., the modern web).
  - will_brown 9y ago
    I'd probably enjoy a lot of the non verbal communication of the Justices and counsel, but you and Scalia are in good company. Its not a well know issue but one people are very sincere about. And I'm not knocking the Court when I say it's slow moving and beholden to tradition, not everything is meant to move fast and break.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      If it serves as consolation, the Ninth Circuit already has an YouTube channel[1], of which I'm a frequent viewer. For some good back-and-forth, I recommend watching hearings with Judge Kozinski. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

k-mcgrady 9y ago

OT: The Supreme Court in the UK has a YouTube channel [1] where videos of judgements are posted (usually very soon after they take place). I'd be interested to know if the SCOTUS has a similar service. I can't find it on YouTube but maybe they can be accessed elsewhere? [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/UKSupremeCourt https://www.youtube.com/user/UKSupremeCourt Edit: Thanks to the below commenters.

phonon 9y ago
The 9th Circuit (an appeals court right below the Supreme Court) puts their cases on youtube also. https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc/videos?flow=grid&sort=p&view=0 https://www.youtube.com/user/9thcirc/videos?flow=grid&sort=p... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObZDipKRH0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObZDipKRH0c is somewhat infamous :-)
xythian 9y ago
SCOTUS somewhat famously only allows audio recordings of proceedings. https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2016 https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2... https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/case-allowing-cameras-supreme-court-proceedings/316876/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/case-al...
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  Point for debate: Between the extremes of transparency and commodification where should we strike the publication balance? e.g. If an organization/individual has ulterior motives (of fears) for testifying in a case other than the limited outcome of the legal question, it has the ability to sway their testimony.
- avs733 9y ago
  We don't want to see Justice Thomas sleeping during arguments do we?
  - bpodgursky 9y ago

piker 9y ago

While this idea seems great, requiring court staff to submit pro se litigants' petitions may be a non-trivial burden. Something like 40% of federal appellate work is responding to (often meritless, often incomprehensible) pro se habeas petitions[0]. I wonder if a side effect of this is additional legislation intended to dampen that burden[1] at the expense of real human liberty. I hope not, but we should balance this issue and be cautious about chilling less fortunate peoples' access to these basic civil mechanisms. [0] http://www.lclark.edu/live/files/777 http://www.lclark.edu/live/files/777 [1] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiterrorism_and_Effective_Death_Penalty_Act_of_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiterrorism_and_Effective_De...

perpetualcrayon 9y ago
I get the feeling that (if I understand this correctly) maybe by putting the petitions out into the open for the world to see (by making it easy for anyone to review online) will cut down on the meritless petitions. After all, it's one thing to throw shit against a wall to see if it will stick (especially if it's a wall in DC that very few people ever look at), and an entirely different thing to throw shit against every wall in the entire US to see if it will stick, and not come out looking like a complete jackass.
avs733 9y ago
I think you argument...especially [1] is reasonable and fair. My response would be that much of that non-trivial burden seems largely created by the system, in an evolutionary biology sense they are defenses that have become defects, not inherent defects. This should seem like an opportunity for constructive reform...whether that is me being overly principled and idealistic is TBD.
azernik 9y ago
1. This is the Supreme Court. It doesn't get random pro se petitions, it gets appeals and certain politically sensitive cases. 2. Court staff already have to deal with this paperwork, they just have to deal with it in paper. This is requiring litigants to submit their filings in electronic form, which would then be automatically added to a publically queriable database. It also saves a lot of pain for lawyers - those I know would love to avoid submitting everything on dead trees, if only their local behind-the-times court would get on board.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

So SCOTUS runs its own system and the rest of the federal courts lock their public records behind the PACER paywall. Very consistent.

Larrikin 9y ago
Its crazy to me that it is legal for there to be a regular fee for viewing a website per view.