5 ms·

PACER Fetch APIs

70 points by danso 7y ago

CalRobert 7y ago
For anyone curious, this is part of a broader project to democratize access to often difficult-to-obtain or paywalled court opinions across many different jurisdictions, among other things.
- applecrazy 7y ago
  Potentially stupid question: why is this a paid thing at all? Aren't court dockets public information?
  - techntoke 7y ago
    It depends, but if they are public they still charge an obscene amount of money to get access to them. Sometimes like $0.50 per page and a $20 fee upfront for administrative costs. Pacer ain't cheap either. This will be a Godsend.
  - stult 7y ago
    Not at all a stupid question. PACER's fees have been a source of controversy for years. They charge $0.10 per page or a max of $3 per document. There's been litigation about the fees[1], but it's still working its way through the court system. A couple of bills that eliminate the fees have been filed to in Congress over the last year or so, but they haven't gone anywhere. It's also an incredibly technically outdated and user unfriendly system, so even without fees it would be worth scraping. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER_(law)#Litigation_over_fees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER_(law)#Litigation_over_fe...
  - MaupitiBlue 7y ago
    They are public. You can always go to the courthouse and use one of the computers to download documents for free. Also, PACER bills quarterly, and your first $50 is free. Of course, if you are a party to the case, you can download for free as well.
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      It's $15, not $50.
    - CobrastanJorji 7y ago
      Viewing them is free. Printing them is not. Also, you're assuming that the public access terminal is a computer. In some places, the "terminals" are human clerks, and the turnaround for searches are days to weeks. And only the first $15 is free, but if you spend $16, you get charged the whole $16, not $1.
  - danso 7y ago
    Not a dumb question. PACER costs some money to maintain, and the fees it charges also pays for the digital maintenance/upgrade of the court system overall. But there's substantial criticism that the fees it charges are still very excessive (10 cents per page, despite the actual cost of storage+retrieval being 1/20,000th of a cent), especially because it's taxpayer funded: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/us/politics/pacer-fees-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/us/politics/pacer-fees-la... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/pacer-court-records.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/pacer-court-recor... https://qz.com/283772/why-pacer-should-and-should-not-be-like-edgar/ https://qz.com/283772/why-pacer-should-and-should-not-be-lik...
equivocates 7y ago
The RECAP project is a great project, and highly recommend its use. But PACER charges 10 cents per page for access and I don't have a problem with that. These fees keep the federal courts open to do vital business when Congress decides it's a good time for a shutdown. Any complaints re: PACER fees should be directed to Congress.
- nkw 7y ago
  There are much better ways for the judiciary to maintain their finances than relying on arbitrary non-cost based fees for public access to public information. Judiciary funding is around $7 billion/year. Pacer makes maybe $150 million/year. Agree that Congress should fix Pacer fees, but the judiciary is not free from blame here.
  - patentatt 7y ago
    I agree. I think it’s a travesty all court documents aren’t mandated to be freely accessible.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Call your congressional representative. Ask them to sponsor legislation to remove pay access to PACER.
- eli 7y ago
  C'mon. I don't think PACER should ever charge fees to access the laws of the land, but I could probably compromise on $0.10 a page only during a shutdown.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  Sorry - that’s a bullshit argument. Because our government sucks at budgeting, we will just slap on some more fees to the end user? Total workaround and creating more issues than it is solving. Every public court document should be available as a PDF for free of cost. No exceptions.
- 7y ago
mlissner 7y ago
Thanks for posting this! I'm the executive director of Free Law Project. If anybody has any questions or comments, I'm happy to chat!
- techntoke 7y ago
  What are some of the more interesting legal documents that you've come accross? I've seen a lot of interesting ones from Steven Biss, where he also sued YouTube in the David Seaman lawsuit. He is the attorney representing Nunes against Twitter for someone having a parody account about him. He is currently representing a guy named Robert Steele in a lawsuit against Jason Goodman that has a lot of very unique and interesting documents regarding cyberwarfare, dirty bomb hoaxes, informants being involved, etc.
  - mlissner 7y ago
    Everything out of the Mueller report, frankly. It's history-making stuff. https://free.law/featured-cases/special-counsel/ https://free.law/featured-cases/special-counsel/
- ikeboy 7y ago
  I use the recap extension. Usually an uploaded PDF or docket is immediately available on courtlistener, but every so often there's a period of time where nothing gets updated; this happened briefly yesterday, for example. Is this some kind of maintenance? I tend to browse Pacer side by side with courtlistener, e.g. get the docket, read through docket on courtlistener, then click through to buy the documents I want. When there's a delay like that I'm never quite sure if it was actually uploaded successfully so I go save the documents separately, it's inconvenient. Also, is there any way you could upload documents that members of a case get for free through Pacer? What I've noticed is that it'll show the docket entry if I have the extension installed, but it's an abbreviated form (e.g. "motion to dismiss" instead of a longer entry with party info, attachments, etc).
  - mlissner 7y ago
    Yeah, we had some outage yesterday. Docker seems to be opening files and then not closing them again, which causes issues sooner or later. Sorry about that. The one redeeming thing with this is when this happens we're usually still getting your uploads, just not processing them. Anyway, sorry. > Also, is there any way you could upload documents that members of a case get for free through Pacer? Yeah, we've experimented with that, but haven't gotten it nailed down yet. If somebody wanted to help, especially somebody with free-look access, we'd love to hear from you.

70 points by danso 7y ago

For anyone curious, this is part of a broader project to democratize access to often difficult-to-obtain or paywalled court opinions across many different jurisdictions, among other things.

applecrazy 7y ago
Potentially stupid question: why is this a paid thing at all? Aren't court dockets public information?
- techntoke 7y ago
  It depends, but if they are public they still charge an obscene amount of money to get access to them. Sometimes like $0.50 per page and a $20 fee upfront for administrative costs. Pacer ain't cheap either. This will be a Godsend.
- stult 7y ago
  Not at all a stupid question. PACER's fees have been a source of controversy for years. They charge $0.10 per page or a max of $3 per document. There's been litigation about the fees[1], but it's still working its way through the court system. A couple of bills that eliminate the fees have been filed to in Congress over the last year or so, but they haven't gone anywhere. It's also an incredibly technically outdated and user unfriendly system, so even without fees it would be worth scraping. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER_(law)#Litigation_over_fees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER_(law)#Litigation_over_fe...
- MaupitiBlue 7y ago
  They are public. You can always go to the courthouse and use one of the computers to download documents for free. Also, PACER bills quarterly, and your first $50 is free. Of course, if you are a party to the case, you can download for free as well.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    It's $15, not $50.
  - CobrastanJorji 7y ago
    Viewing them is free. Printing them is not. Also, you're assuming that the public access terminal is a computer. In some places, the "terminals" are human clerks, and the turnaround for searches are days to weeks. And only the first $15 is free, but if you spend $16, you get charged the whole $16, not $1.
- danso 7y ago
  Not a dumb question. PACER costs some money to maintain, and the fees it charges also pays for the digital maintenance/upgrade of the court system overall. But there's substantial criticism that the fees it charges are still very excessive (10 cents per page, despite the actual cost of storage+retrieval being 1/20,000th of a cent), especially because it's taxpayer funded: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/us/politics/pacer-fees-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/us/politics/pacer-fees-la... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/pacer-court-records.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/pacer-court-recor... https://qz.com/283772/why-pacer-should-and-should-not-be-like-edgar/ https://qz.com/283772/why-pacer-should-and-should-not-be-lik...

equivocates 7y ago

The RECAP project is a great project, and highly recommend its use. But PACER charges 10 cents per page for access and I don't have a problem with that. These fees keep the federal courts open to do vital business when Congress decides it's a good time for a shutdown. Any complaints re: PACER fees should be directed to Congress.

nkw 7y ago
There are much better ways for the judiciary to maintain their finances than relying on arbitrary non-cost based fees for public access to public information. Judiciary funding is around $7 billion/year. Pacer makes maybe $150 million/year. Agree that Congress should fix Pacer fees, but the judiciary is not free from blame here.
- patentatt 7y ago
  I agree. I think it’s a travesty all court documents aren’t mandated to be freely accessible.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Call your congressional representative. Ask them to sponsor legislation to remove pay access to PACER.
eli 7y ago
C'mon. I don't think PACER should ever charge fees to access the laws of the land, but I could probably compromise on $0.10 a page only during a shutdown.
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
Sorry - that’s a bullshit argument. Because our government sucks at budgeting, we will just slap on some more fees to the end user? Total workaround and creating more issues than it is solving. Every public court document should be available as a PDF for free of cost. No exceptions.
7y ago

mlissner 7y ago

Thanks for posting this! I'm the executive director of Free Law Project. If anybody has any questions or comments, I'm happy to chat!

techntoke 7y ago
What are some of the more interesting legal documents that you've come accross? I've seen a lot of interesting ones from Steven Biss, where he also sued YouTube in the David Seaman lawsuit. He is the attorney representing Nunes against Twitter for someone having a parody account about him. He is currently representing a guy named Robert Steele in a lawsuit against Jason Goodman that has a lot of very unique and interesting documents regarding cyberwarfare, dirty bomb hoaxes, informants being involved, etc.
- mlissner 7y ago
  Everything out of the Mueller report, frankly. It's history-making stuff. https://free.law/featured-cases/special-counsel/ https://free.law/featured-cases/special-counsel/
ikeboy 7y ago
I use the recap extension. Usually an uploaded PDF or docket is immediately available on courtlistener, but every so often there's a period of time where nothing gets updated; this happened briefly yesterday, for example. Is this some kind of maintenance? I tend to browse Pacer side by side with courtlistener, e.g. get the docket, read through docket on courtlistener, then click through to buy the documents I want. When there's a delay like that I'm never quite sure if it was actually uploaded successfully so I go save the documents separately, it's inconvenient. Also, is there any way you could upload documents that members of a case get for free through Pacer? What I've noticed is that it'll show the docket entry if I have the extension installed, but it's an abbreviated form (e.g. "motion to dismiss" instead of a longer entry with party info, attachments, etc).
- mlissner 7y ago
  Yeah, we had some outage yesterday. Docker seems to be opening files and then not closing them again, which causes issues sooner or later. Sorry about that. The one redeeming thing with this is when this happens we're usually still getting your uploads, just not processing them. Anyway, sorry. > Also, is there any way you could upload documents that members of a case get for free through Pacer? Yeah, we've experimented with that, but haven't gotten it nailed down yet. If somebody wanted to help, especially somebody with free-look access, we'd love to hear from you.