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.
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