Vincent G. Rinn Law Library

New PACER Training Web Page Made Available

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an online service of the United States Judiciary that provides case and docket information from Federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts. While the growth of PACER accounts appears to be very robust based on the findings of the "United States Courts Electronic Public Access Program - PACER Service Assessment (Sept. 2010).

PACER management appears to be doing more marketing and outreach recently. It is unclear whether this might be a response to re-occuring criticism that the Judiciary keeps much of their "public" information behind what is termed a "paywall". Or the occassional inquiries from the likes of Senator Lieberman about how the PACER generated funds are being spent. See:     

 Lieberman: Why Do We Have to Pay for PACER?   

 DOJ Pays $4M a Year to Read Public Court Documents  

Use RECAP To Bypass Court Document PACER Paywall

Perhaps just like any entity that sells a service, PACER may just want to increase the usability of their service and expand its use into new markets ? Another graph from the PACER assessment about user constiuencies can be instructive.

While 75% of the users are lawyers and litigants, there are some other sectors that could be making greater use of the service. Several of the other sectors identified as 5% or less, could probably be grown by a more user -friendly site, expanded marketing, and accessible training for  PACER.

The Office of the US Courts appears to me moving on all these fronts :

• Released the Case Locator, formerly the U.S.
Party/Case Index (March 2010)
• Increased the fee waiver to $10 per quarter
(March 2010)
• Redesigned the PACER website, pacer.gov
(May 2010)

And most recently have introduced a web site that provides basic orientation and training for PACER, using a subset of actual court filings for users to work with.

PACER Training Site (District Court CM/ECF Version 4.2) - Document Filing System

"Welcome to the PACER training site. Use this site to learn how to use PACER. The site is free of charge and has been populated with real case data from New York Western District Court from cases filed between 1/1/2007 and 7/1/2007."

The page provides suggested searches to try using the tabbed functions at the top of the page. Exeprimenting with the results from the training subset can orient a new user to the PACER interface.

It is also suggested that potential users download the "PACER Service Center User Manual" to familiarize themselves with the service.

 

 

 

 

"GPO Access" Goes Archive Only

Since the early 1990s, GPO ( Government Printing Office ) provided "GPO Access" on the internet, a service that has provided free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government. But over the years, GPO had failed to update its technological abilities to keep pace with changes in the information dissemination environment. The development of new technologies and new demands necessitated the development of a new information management and distribution system for government information.

The new system,”FDsys”, Federal Digital System, has been in development for several years.  FDsys, should provide GPO with the technical and management capabilities to not only catch up the changes in it's environment  but to aggressively move forward in the 21 Century. The two systems have been running in parallel, as data was migrated to FDsys.  FDsys became the U.S. Government Printing Office's (GPO’s) system of record for online Federal Government information in December 2010. GPO is now in the process of a phased shutdown of GPO Access.

As of November 2011, GPO Access will be available only as an archive, with no new information added to it. While GPO Access will no longer be updated, it will remain accessible to the public. In the final phase, GPO Access will shut down permanently and will no longer be available for public use. A date has not yet been established for the final shutdown of GPO Access; however, it is slated for fiscal year 2012.

Libraries should take this opportunity (if they have not already done so) to review their Web sites, presentations, brochures, and other materials that reference GPO Access and work to update or replace these materials.

View instructions on how to create links to FDsys content   ( For information on the URL structure for each collection, visit the Sample Searches and URLs page for the collections listed on this page)

 

Historians' Law Suit Gets Release of Nixon Grand Jury Files

In the federal court case, of In Re Petition of Stanley Kutler, et al', filed by Stanley Kutler, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, the American Historical Association, the American Society for Legal History, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Archivists, the Court was asked to unseal the transcripts of President Richard M. Nixon’s grand jury testimony during June 23 and 24, 1975.

According to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) press release, the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) had decided that it  was necessary to question former President Richard M. Nixon in connection with various investigations being conducted by by the Special prosecutor at the time. According to courts documents, the agreement to take President Nixon’s testimony in connection with its open investigations, was conducted in a manner that would avoid litigation over such issues as executive privilege.

"On June 23 and 24, 1975, President Nixon testified for eleven hours before two members of the grand jury and several WSPF attorneys. Afterward, a full transcript of the proceeding was read to the remaining members of the grand jury in Washington, DC."

Traditionaly grand jury testimony is to remain secret. But the rule of grand jury secrecy is not without exceptions. After considering several factors raised by the petitioners and the government, the judge decided that :

"Taken together, the Court finds that the relevant factors weigh in favor of unsealing President Nixon’s grand jury testimony and the WSPF’s associated materials, subject to NARA’s review procedures. The special circumstances presented here—namely, undisputed historical interest in the requested records—far outweigh the need to maintain the secrecy of the records. The Court is confident that disclosure will greatly benefit the public and its understanding of Watergate without compromising the tradition and objectives of grand jury secrecy".

As a result of this ruling, the National Archives opened 26 files from its Records of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) collection including transcripts of President Nixon’s grand jury testimony of June 23-24, 1975. There are some redactions made for the privacy of still-living persons and for national security.

The materials may be obtained at the following websites:

Government Printing Office (GPO)
    Scribd
        Our Archives - Wiki

Latest GPO/PACER Pilot Looks Promising

While many individual federal courts make some  of their opinions accessible on their websites, the periods covered and length of time they remain available, can vary widely. The Government Printing Office (GPO) has been working for years to try to make the court opinions from the Judiciary's for-fee PACER online service, available to the public through the  federal depository library program (FDLP).

The first pilot project was in 2007 with access at 15 physical depositories having direct access to the PACER service with a password.. The second was in 2010 allowing access via the internet but to records from only from 12 courts. The latest pilot approved in 2011 plans to provide access to 30+ courts via the GPO online service, FDsys ( Beginning with 3,then 12, then more than 30 courts).

For the previous pilots the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC)  said they wanted to use the pilots to assess whether there was public demand for such a service through the GPO FDLP. However, given the very limited number of courts whose opinions were being made available, it was questionable whether the pilots could really provide an accurate reading of public demand. With 12 courts of Appeal and 90+ District and Bankruptcy Courts respectively, even the latest offering of 30 courts, seems too small to be a real test of user demand.

However, this time the joint project with GPO, seems to portend a possibly expanding service using the publicly accessible Fdsys service from GPO. GPO has created specific item numbers and SUDOC number designations for the court opinions to be made available. This would indicate the establishment of a permanent service that could expand over time to include many more courts. At least one hopes that is the implication.

PACER has to be supported by user fees because of the law that created it. It requires the creation of a billing account to use it. It contains not only the final court opinions but also all the electronic filings in these cases. This creates a massive store of online docket information in addition to the opinions. While PACER has not been charging for the opinions themselves, users still need to create an account to access them. The docket information has not been considered for no-fee distribution.

It would seem that PACER could make the opinions that they are not charging for anyway, more easily available by having GPO make them available online. The danger of hacking to the PACER site would be eliminated and users would not have to have an account on PACER to get them. PACER could continue to charge for access to  the detailed docket entries, to support the PACER service.

The current joint project has the court records coming directly from the PACER service which GPO then processes  and makes them available through their own interface on FDsys. This insures that the records can be authenticated by GPO and allows advanced FDsys searching capabilities to be provided for this new material.

The new collection is called, United States Courts Opinions collection. It can be linked to from the general FDsys page. "Initial testing is with three courts: the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, United States District Court District of Rhode Island, and United States Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Florida. The number of courts participating in the pilot will rapidly expand to twelve and, after testing, to more than thirty. The content of this collection dates back to April 2004, though searchable electronic holdings for some courts may be incomplete for this earlier time period."

The database includes both Browse and Search functions. The advance search includes such fields as :

•    Case Number
•    Court Name
•    Court Type
•    District Case Type
•    District Cause
•    Docket Text
•    Nature of Suit
•    Party Name
•    Party Role
•       Year
This is more than the native PACER site provides.

"Having opinions accessible through FDsys provides the ability for users to search for opinions from one court, from select courts, and from all available courts, along with the ability to search for opinions in conjunction with other FDsys content."

This joint project appears to be the most promising of those undertaken by GPO and AOUSC. Public users can only hope that it is eventually expanded to include all the public opinions to be issued by the federal courts which should be freely available to all citizens.