Inside Higher Ed has a good analysis of the copyright infringement suit against Georgia State University. Three major academic presses, backed by the Association of American Publishers, allege "systematic, widespread, and unauthorized copying and distribution" at the university through the library electronic course reserve system, Blackboard, departmental Web sites and individual course syllabi posted online.

See also the NYT story and the press release from the AAP.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Channel 3000:

[Gov. Jim Doyle] vetoed a bill that would expand access to juvenile court records for police, judges and social workers.

Current state law considers juvenile court records confidential. Law enforcement officers, judges and prosecutors must request permission from a judge to access them.

The bill would have deemed the records open to any law enforcement officer, judge or district attorney. It also would have opened the records to the state Department of Health and Family Services, county human services departments and licensed child welfare agencies.

Doyle said that the bill is too broad and makes the records available to too many people. He said that juvenile information is sensitive and should be closely guarded.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

CM/ECF Pacer Access is now available for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals according to Legal Dockets Online. Along with the D.C. and Veteran Claims courts, it joins the 4th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 10th circuit courts which already use the CM/ECF system.

What does this mean? CM/ECF makes available online court case docket sheets and filings, allows attorneys to file electronically, court clerks to enter docket entries, and enables electronic noticing.

From the US Courts Press Release:

Nationwide implementation of the federal judiciary's Case Management and Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system is nearly completed in the district and bankruptcy courts and is advancing in the appellate courts. CM/ECF not only replaces the courts' old electronic docketing and case management systems, but also provides courts the option to have case file documents in electronic format, and to accept filings over the Internet.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to Law.com:

Patent attorneys are hailing the Western District of Wisconsin as the nation's newest so-called rocket docket, characterized by speedy trials and a jury pool friendly to patent holders.

Patent case filings are climbing in the district based in Madison, including cases involving companies headquartered outside the area. Lawyers say they're attracted by the district's educated jury pool, which reflects the work force and populace connected to the University of Wisconsin and the thriving local high-technology sector.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent study finds that children may offer more accurate court testimony than adults. The study was conducted by two Cornell University professors: Valerie Reyna, human development professor, and Chuck Brainerd, human development and law school professor.

Science Daily reports:

They say children depend more heavily on a part of the mind that records, "what actually happened," while adults depend more on another part of the mind that records, "the meaning of what happened." As a result, they say, adults are more susceptible to false memories, which can be extremely problematic in court cases.

Reyna and Brainerd's findings are summarized in a new book, The Science of False Memory, published by Oxford University Press.

Source: Boing Boing

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the Wisconsin Court System Headlines:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is historically among the most influential state supreme courts in the United States, according to preliminary findings of a study published in December by the UC Davis (University of California, Davis) Law Review.

The study, which was highlighted in a March 11 column by New York Times legal affairs writer Adam Liptak, examined 66 years of decisions by state supreme courts nationwide.

Wisconsin ranked eighth in two categories of study - the number of high court decisions that have been "followed" at least once by an out-of-state court, and the number of state high court decisions that have been followed at least three times by out-of-state courts.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WisPolitics.com reports on two new pieces of legislation proposed by State Representative Marlin Schneider.

The first would open the deliberations of the State Supreme Court. From the article:

Schneider believes the public should also have the right to know about the private discussions of the Supreme Court. Just as the legislature must debate bills and issues in public, so too should the appellate courts. Hence, the lawmaker's.. bill opens up these deliberations to the public.

The second provides criminal penalties against those who CCAP to discriminate against employment and housing. This bill is in response to criticism of Schneider's earlier bill which would have limited CCAP access court and law enforcement personnel.

From the article:

The... bill disavows the restrictions made in his previous bill but directly addresses the problem of discrimination, particularly in employment and housing. Schneider's bill would make it a Class I felon for anyone to discriminate in employment or housing because of an arrest or conviction record on CCAP.

Thanks to Bev Butula for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was using Justia yesterday and noticed something I hadn't seen before - US Federal Court Appeals Opinions. It includes all US Federal appellate cases since 1950 browse-able by F 2d and F 3d citation. Wow - how long has that been there?

An email from Justia's Tim Stanley confirmed that the 1950+ Fed is indeed brand new. According to Tim:

Carl Malamud (of Media.org) and Ed Walters (of Fastcase.com) worked out the deal, and Public.Resource.org and the Creative Commons are setting up the Legal Commons where copies of all the free case law will be online in archive form for anyone to download and use.

There is a lot of fixing to do (multiple versions of the same case, getting in the internal page numbers) but this will get done :) And of course more free case law and codes are on the way.

This is outstanding! Kudos to all involved! What a valuable resource for the legal community and for the community as a whole. I'd seen Robert Ambrogi's announcement last week that this was coming and it appears that he was dead-on, as usual.
-----------
Updates: For more info, see the press release from PublicResource.Org.

And see also the post from Justia which says to "look for the cases to also appear on AltLaw and PreCYdent soon (if not already) and... many many other places"

How true - here is a beta search engine for the Federal Reporter.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

JS Online reports that:

Milwaukee County officials mistakenly released numerous confidential court records for a citizens group's Web site that detail payments for tests and other costs linked to mental competency, paternity and guardianship cases, officials acknowledged.

The records obtained by Citizens for Responsible Government Network were part of a county database of 188,000 purchasing invoices for 2006 and 2007. The group put the information on its Web site Tuesday morning. Late Friday, the group agreed to remove the confidential court records at the county's request.

The database is available on the Citizens for Responsible Government Network web site.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Beloit Daily News weighs in on the two pending Wisconsin bills which would limit access to court records via CCAP.

AB 418 would restrict public access and allow only judges, court officials, police, lawyers and "accredited" journalists to view the information.

AB 754 would require that all records pertaining to a case be deleted if it is dismissed; if a defendant is found not guilty; or if a case is overturned on appeal.

Source: The Wheeler Report

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to Legal Dockets Online for alerting me to the PACER recycling center, run by the folks at Public.Resource.org. Basically, this gathers "recycled" court filings donated by people who have paid to access them via PACER, then offers them free on the Internet.

According to the FAQ, here's how it works:

Just upload all your PACER Documents to our recycling bin. Click on the recycle bin and you'll be presented with a dialogue to choose files to upload. Then, just hit the "Start Upload" button and you'll hear the sounds of progress as your documents get reinjected into the public domain.

We'll take the documents, look at them, and then put them onto bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/pacer for future distribution. This is a manual process and you won't see your documents show up right away. But, over time, we hope to accumulate a significant database of PACER Documents.

While the ideal of making law freely available on the Internet is admirable, I'm not really convinced of the value of this system. So far, the total number of documents offered looks very slim - only time will tell if that number increases enough to be useful. However, I'm also not seeing that any dockets are available, which puts the documents that are there somewhat out of context.

More troublesome, however, is that unlike the fanciful site instructing you to upload your PACER docs, viewing the already uploaded documents is not nearly as pretty. Basically, you're presented with a list of folders in which you must browse your way through state, court, docket number, and a few other folders whose labels I couldn't decipher. No search engine to be had, as far as I could see. Nothing in the way of instructions either. Perhaps more sophistication is to come and it's simply too early to tell.

Frankly, in the realm of free PACER alternatives, you're much better off with Justia. Not only is there a lot more content, the search interface is excellent. And it's got dockets, RSS feeds, and more.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I ran across this announcement today on the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission Web site:

The Wisconsin Sentencing Commission and its statutory provisions under §973.30 were eliminated in the State's 2007-09 Biennium Budget. Neither the Commission nor any other agency will continue to collect and analyze sentencing guidelines worksheets. Sentencing courts are still required to consider the guidelines under §973.017 (2)(a), yet will not need to complete or submit guidelines worksheets.

The website and its contents will remain in their current location until February 29, 2008, at which point the site will be archived and its relevant content moved elsewhere on the web. A notification will be posted on this site to redirect visitors to the new location of these publications.

If you need to speak to someone regarding the Sentencing Commission, please contact Kristi Waits at the Office of Justice Assistance at (608) 261-7525 or kristi.waits@wisconsin.gov.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Legal Dockets Online Blog reports that the PACER U.S. Party Case Index now includes all Federal District and Bankruptcy Courts. It does not, however, include the following courts:

• U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, SECOND CIRCUIT
  
• U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, FIFTH CIRCUIT
  
• U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, SEVENTH CIRCUIT
  
• U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
  
• U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, FEDERAL CIRCUIT

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In what is believed to be a first, a defense attorney in Tennessee is arguing for a change of venue citing blog posts along with newspaper and television reporting.

According to Law.com:

Attorney Philip Lomonaco of Knoxville, Tenn., called the Internet "the largest unregulated source for information" in the community, and said it had been used to "outrage and taint any jury pool" that could be seated to hear the case....

Source: Lex Scripta

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wisconsin State Court system has recently introduced new, more-user-friendly forms designed for people who are representing themselves in small claims actions. The forms are accompanied by plain-English instructions and are available both on the web and in hard copy.

See the Supreme Court press release for more information.

Source: Proof and Hearsay

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Minnesota has recently introduced a statewide electronic case records service called MPA Remote, which is short for Minnesota Trial Court Public Access Remote view.

Similar to Wisconsin's CCAP system, MPA Remote displays trial court case information for public viewing, including register of actions, calendars, judgments, and orders and notices prepared by the court. Note that Internet Explorer is required to use this service - Firefox doesn't work.

See the National Center for State Courts for information about other states' public access to court records.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the press release:

Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.

This is a big deal and has generated quite a buzz around the blogosphere. Check out the reaction from Elmer Masters (see also his post on Teknoids); Real Lawyers Have Blogs; and Jason the Content Librarian.

More from the press release:

This transaction represents a one-time purchase of a copy of data. This corpus will be integrated into the ongoing public services from organizations such as AltLaw and the Legal Information Institute, thus providing continuity of coverage into the future.

I was wondering if this would duplicate efforts with AltLaw (which already has federal case law from the last 10 to 15 years), but it seems not. Looks like this new partnership will provide the retrospective materials while Altlaw will continue to collect the newer cases.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The La Crosse Tribune is running a series of articles on plea agreements - "how plea agreements are forged, why they have become a fixture in the courts and what they bring to our legal system."

According to The Tribune, only about one percent of felony cases in La Crosse County make it to trial compared to about three percent state-wide.

The paper also states, however, that despite a decreasing number of trials, La Crosse County has more than doubled its trial budgeting and spending in the past decade, mostly due to a dramatic increase in court-appointed attorney costs.

Articles in the series so far:

• Pleading for justice - Monday, November 19, 2007
  
• Plea deals make courts efficient - Sunday, November 18, 2007
  
• Trials are fewer, but costs are on the rise - Sunday, November 18, 2007

Source: The Wheeler Report

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a two year pilot project, free public access to federal court records via PACER has been made available at 16 libraries in 14 states under a joint pilot project of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the Government Printing Office.

According to a press release from the US Courts, the project is part of the judiciary's continuing effort to expand public access to court records by discovering if a segment of the public desires access to information contained in the PACER system but is unlikely to go to a courthouse or become a PACER user.

The federal depository libraries participating in the pilot are:

• Alaska State Court Law Library, AK
  
• 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Library, IL
  
• San Bernadino County Law Library, CA
  
• University of Michigan School of Law, MI
  
• Sacramento County Public Law Library, CA
  
• University of Tennessee College of Law, TN
  
• Nova Southeastern University Law Library, FL
  
• New Mexico Supreme Court Law Library, NM
  
• Lee College, TX
  
• Rutgers Law Library, NJ
  
• State Library of Ohio, OH
  
• Fordham Law School, NY
  
• Wayne State University, MI
  
• Rogers State University, OK
  
• Portland Public Library, ME
  
• Northern Kentucky University, KY

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the Christian Science Monitor:

This week the US Sentencing Commission, with little fanfare, officially reduced its recommended sentences for crack-related offenses. The commission announced last spring that it intended to make the change, and Congress had until Nov. 1 to stop the move. It didn't, and the revised guidelines became effective Thursday.

Thanks to Bill Ebbott for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update: 10/23/07
RSS feeds will be added to "Court Record Events" by the end of the day according to Jean Bousquet over at Wisconsin Courts. And based on this post, they are also working on adding search terms to the feed titles, as well as, beefing up the RSS info page.

A big thanks to Judge Richard Sankovitz for forwarding this post to Jean and to Jean and the CCAP team for so quickly addressing my concerns!

--------------------------
Tracking Wisconsin cases via CCAP just got a lot easier - RSS Feeds are now available on both the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access (WCCA) and the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Case Access (WSCCA) Web sites.

You'll notice that when you perform a search, a small orange RSS button appears at the top right on your search results page. This generates a RSS feed based on the keywords of your search. Subscribe to it with your RSS feed reader and you'll receive automatic notification of any new cases matching your keywords. See a sample search results page below:

This is a wonderful improvement to CCAP. The ability to track cases by party name (think clients/potential clients/competition), attorney, topic (class code), etc. is a powerful time saving device for legal practitioners, journalists, and other interested parties.

I do have one suggestion for improvement. In my RSS reader (I use Bloglines), my "Harley Davidson" feed above comes up with the generic title, Wisconsin Circuit Court Access. That's fine if I'm only monitoring one feed, but if I have multiple feeds, there is no way to tell them apart unless I change the feed title myself. It would be nice if the search terms came up in the feed title.

Proof and Hearsay also notes that they'd like to see a RSS feed on the "Court Record Events" page to track the docket for a specific case. I agree that this would also be a very nice addition.

There is a page on the Wisconsin Courts pages that explains what RSS is, but it's all quite generic. It would be nice if explained more specifically about the feeds generated by CCAP.

But all in all, this is an awesome service! A great addition to an already wonderful product.

Source: Proof and Hearsay

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wisconsin Court system has developed RSS feeds for the following:

• News releases
• Supreme Court opinions and dispositional orders
• Supreme Court rules
• Supreme Court oral arguments
• Supreme Court dispositional orders
• Court of Appeals opinions
• Court of Appeals certifications

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Davis & Kuelthau librarian, Bev Butula has written a very useful article in this month's Wisconsin Lawyer entitled, Online Access to Circuit Court Dockets. The article explores Wisconsin's online docket database (CCAP) and looks at the status of online access in some other states.

From the conclusion:

Searching circuit court dockets in Wisconsin is accomplished via CCAP. Information seekers often take this service for granted. Many states have yet to develop an online database. Some only make particular counties available. Online availability is progressing at different speeds throughout the United States and currently is available on a limited basis. To effectively conduct a non-Wisconsin docket search, the researcher should start with the National Center for State Courts, the Virtual Chase, or LLRX, or call the court's clerk to inquire if an online database is available.

I would also recommend subscribing to Legal Dockets Online Blog for keeping tabs on court docket info.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Proof and Hearsay reports on where to find Wisconsin's tech-savvy juries.

According to the statistics for twenty-nine counties' jurors, just over 17 percent of prospective jurors surveyed in 2006 filed their jury questionnaire responses online at the court's web site.

A county break down shows that the highest percentages came from:

• Eau Claire County - 40 percent
  
• Suburban Waukesha County - 32.8 percent
  
• Milwaukee County - 21.4 percent

Lowest percentage of online responses:

• Langlade County - 0.6 percent (only 7 of 1,100 surveyed)

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Assembly Bill 418 which would stop ordinary citizens from viewing Wisconsin court records online via CCAP has aroused much debate.

JSOnline's Proof and Hearsay summarizes:

It's a footnote here that the bill to restrict access to Wisconsin's online court records database is not likely to be seriously considered this Legislative term, but the fact the long-debated matter has risen to the level of Legislative debate has drawn a sizable amount of media attention. It's an interesting debate: the records are going to be open, but should they be convenient? State AG J.B. Van Hollen says keep 'em online, and newspapers and judges are pushing for openness while a handful of Milwaukee's legislators say making prosecutions so immutably public adds to the burdens faced by the people already having a hard time finding work.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Proof and Hearsay reports that the option to "Pay Fees Online" has quietly been added to CCAP. At this point, however, it is only enabled for Kenosha County.

Here's the message that you see when you click on the "Pay Fees Online" button:

Welcome to the Wisconsin Court System's Circuit Court Online Payment system. This Web site allows payment of circuit court fees and/or fines online. A 2.35% convenience fee for MasterCard and a $1.50 flat fee for electronic check will be charged by US Bank to process payments.

The online payment feature is implemented only in Kenosha County with US Bank. After a two month evaluation period and approval by US Bank, this service will be expanded to additional counties.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A 19-year-old restaurant worker is suing the California Supreme Court to reverse its practice of largely ignoring unpublished court opinions, according to the McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Source: Library Stuff

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

US Courts has an interesting article on how PACER has altered the business of the courts. Here's a sampling from the article:

• "It's definitely changed the way our office does business, and I think it's been a change for the better," said Monica Menier, clerk of the bankruptcy court in the Middle District of Louisiana.

  "Back in the paper world, we constantly had law firm runners who came to the clerk's office to make copies of case files. They'd have to drive to the courthouse, find a parking place, feed the meter, and pay 50 cents per copy. Helping them consumed a lot of staff time," she said. "Those days are gone."

• Bankruptcy Judge J. Rich Leonard in the Eastern District of North Carolina voiced one concern about the decrease in courthouse traffic. "I'm worried about what can be the complete absence of interaction between lawyers and their staffs and the court staff," he said.

  "The level of camaraderie and shared professionalism incident to the delivery of paper files has been affected. Those sort of contacts are gone. The only person in our clerk's staff that many lawyers who practice before me know is our courtroom deputy, whom they see in court," Leonard said. "Things are more formalized now."

• Judge Leonard said PACER's growth has resulted in one change in his judicial behavior: He's more likely to insist on quicker responses from lawyers because "submitting a reply brief in two days is much easier than it was in a paper world."

Source: Legal Dockets Online

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, the Judicial Conference of the United States voted to make transcripts of federal district and bankruptcy court proceedings available online through PACER.

According to the press release:

Under the new policy, transcripts created by court reporters or transcribers will be available for inspection and copying in a clerk of court's office and for download from PACER 90 days after they are delivered to the clerk. Individuals will be able to view, download, or print a copy of a transcript from PACER for eight cents per page.

During the initial 90-day period, transcripts will be available at the clerk's office for inspection only, or may be purchased from the court reporter or transcriber.

Source: Legal Dockets Online

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From a US Courts news release:

The federal Judiciary is seeking comment on the privacy and security implications related to public Internet access to certain documents in criminal case files...

The committee is interested in comments on a proposal to restrict public Internet access to plea agreements in criminal cases, which may contain information identifying defendants who are cooperating with law enforcement investigations.

See the full news release for information on how to submit comments.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Deliberations has an interesting post on jurors who blog. The part that caught my librarian's eye was the collection of tips on setting up searches to find juror blog posts.

Summarized, they are:

• Learn about RSS and get yourself a feed reader
  
• Search for your case name plus "jury duty" and your city
  
• Search both blogs and news stories
  
• Don't forget about comments in blogs
  
• Let others know you're looking --- especially your librarian! (I added that last part!)

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

More goodies from Justia - they expanded their Federal District Court Filings database. They've gone back a few more years and now cover from 2004 to the present. And now, in addition to just seeing information about the case, for some cases you can actually view the opinions, orders, and complete filings. This is awesome!

Cases for which opinions and orders and available have a gavel icon. Cases for with complete filings are noted with a star icon. I suspect that the latter must be very new since I've not seen it mentioned anywhere yet.

To see a case with opinions and orders, run a search and select the Only Case Filings with Downloadable Opinions or Orders button. There doesn't seem to be a button yet for complete filings, but I did happen to find some - run a search for Tivo - the two most recent cases have stars.

Justia is pulling the content from PACER. Although the opinions and orders are available on PACER at no charge, you need an account to access them. With Justia, no account is needed. And for the cases with complete filings, you're getting a real bargain since normally you'd have to pay for those on PACER. Plus Justia offers more search options than PACER. And, of course, every search is RSS subscribe-able in Justia.

Mary Minow of LawLibrary Blog posted an interview with Nick Moline, programmer at Justia a few weeks ago. Although the database currently goes back to 2004, he said that Justia has plans to add more.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WisconsinEye announced yesterday that it will begin gavel-to-gavel broadcast coverage of oral arguments in the State Supreme Court beginning with today's with three scheduled cases.

• State of Wisconsin v. Ronald Schaefer (Case # 2006AP1826-CRAC)
• Stuart v. Weisflog's Showroom Gallery (Case # 2005AP1287)09-05-07
• Stuart v. Weisflog's Showroom Gallery (Case # 2005AP886)

WisconsinEye President & CEO Chris Long said the network plans to cover all oral arguments on the Court's 2007-2008 calendar either live or tape-delayed on Charter Channel 200 and Time Warner Channel 163. All hearing coverage will also be broadcast and permanently archived at WisconsinEye.

Source: WisPolitics.com

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times reports on the project of "Internet gadfly" Carl Malamud, founder of Public.Resource.Org, to make more than 10 million pages of case law available free online.

According to the ReadMe file on Public.Resource.Org,

The short-term goal of the project is the creation of an unencumbered full-text repository of the Federal Reporter, the Federal Supplement, and the Federal Appendix. The medium-term goal is the creation of an unencumbered full-text repository of all state and federal cases and codes.

The entire Federal Reporter, Supplement and Appendix is a short-term goal? All federal and state cases and codes are medium-term? My goodness, what would be considered long-term?

In the ReadMe file dated Friday, August 17th, Malamud reports that he hopes to have the Federal Reporter, first series (300 volumes) scanned within the next few months. So far, he's got 1000 pages of court decisions from the 1880s (scanned from a West ultrafiche).

Malamud has written a letter to Thomson West stating his intent to create "an unencumbered public repository of all federal and state case law and codes. This goal is not meant to compete with commercial vendors such as yourself, who perform a worthy service for the large law firms and other well-funded institutions who practice the business of law." In the letter, Malamud asks Thomson to clarify their copyright claims on the reports; Thomson has yet to reply.

Thanks to my colleague, Bill Ebbott, for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

JS Online reports that the ABA is considering a resolution urging local, state and federal governments to seal the records of criminal cases in which convictions were not obtained. "It also calls for sealing the records of misdemeanor and felony convictions after a specified period of 'law-abiding conduct.' Only police and prosecutors would have access to the sealed files." Currently, such are records are available in Wisconsin via CCAP.

Wisconsin ABA delegate, Attorney Richard Podell, "said the measure 'has a good chance' of passing and that if it does, ABA members would appeal to legislators in every state to pass matching laws."

JS Online also reports that "Wisconsin legislators, citing the same concerns, introduced Assembly Bill 418 in late June. It would restrict access to online court records to court officials, law enforcement personnel, attorneys and accredited journalists."

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Proof and Hearsay, the blog from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff on legal issues, offers another handy CCAP search tip: how to look at individual case records without having to click on the disclaimer screen for every new case that comes up.

Installing a Firefox script using Greasemonkey is required. That may sound scary, but step by step instructions are provided.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Reuters:

Britain's lawyers and judges are to break with centuries-old tradition and cease wearing white horse-hair wigs in non-criminal cases, the head of the country's judiciary announced on Thursday.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, said new dress rules would mean the wigs, which British legal professionals have worn since the 17th century, would not be needed in civil or family court cases.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Continuing its efforts to enhance the transparency of courtroom proceedings, the federal Judiciary is about to launch a pilot project to make digital audio recordings publicly available online," reports The Third Branch.

Five pilot project courts will begin loading the audio files into their CM/ECF systems later this summer where they will be available via PACER. During the six-to-12-month pilot project, access to the audio files will cost 16 cents--eight cents for accessing the docket sheet and another eight cents for selecting the audio file.

The five pilot project courts are:

• U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska
  
• U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
  
• U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maine
  
• U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Alabama
  
• U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina

Source: Legal Dockets Online Blog

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To encourage new users, AudioCaseFiles, a web site of downloadable MP3 files of court opinions, is available at no charge this summer.

This service, which is aimed at law students, provides recordings of most of the opinions that appear in many law school first year course casebooks. Looks like there are a couple hundred so far, but the company has plans to add lots more, including cases from 2L and 3L casebooks.

Downloading the cases to your iPod is very easy and the voice recording the case is pleasant - not a computer generated voice. I did a blog search for AudioCaseFiles to see what students thought about it. There wasn't too much talk about it, but all reactions were positive. Most liked to be able to exercise or do other things while listening.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few weeks ago, our Evening and Weekend Reference Librarian, Eric Taylor, noticed a large gap in the public domain citation numbers for the 2007 Wisconsin Court of Appeals opinions. Upon contacting the court, we received the following memorandum from Christopher Paulsen, Chief Deputy Clerk:

Please be advised that the Public Domain Citation (PDC) numbers 2007 WI App 51 though 109 were erroneously assigned to unpublished cases. Upon discovery of the error, numbers 51 though 109 were removed from the court's database system and PDC numbers for published cases were resumed sequentially beginning with 2007 WI App 110.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Law.com reports that the 7th Circuit has recently created a wiki. According to Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, who spearheaded the project, "the goal is to concentrate on procedure (in both the court of appeals and the district courts) but not to cover substance."

To contribute to the wiki, see the Registration page.

Source: Slaw

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AALL has conducted a State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources. The report presents the results of a survey of primary online legal resources and whether these resources are official and capable of being authenticated. In short, "How trustworthy are state-level primary legal resources on the Web?"

The answer (from the executive summary):

A significant number of the state online legal resources are official but none are authenticated or afford ready authentication by standard methods. State online primary legal resources are therefore not sufficiently trustworthy. Citizens and law researchers may reasonably doubt their authority and should approach such resources critically.

According to AALL President, Sally Holterhoff, the report is the focus of a National Summit on Authentication of Digital Information, which AALL will hold April 20-21 in Chicago. The 50 delegates to the summit are judges, state government officials, attorneys, and leaders of AALL and of other organizations, such as the American Bar Association. All of them were invited to participate because of their interest in exploring legal and technological solutions to the issues raised in the report.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has created a handy guide to Filing a Petition for Review : A Guide to Seeking Review in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The nine page document is dated October 2006.

Abstract:

This is a simplified guide to the Wisconsin Rules of Appellate Procedure with respect to filing petitions for review and is intended primarily for people who are not lawyers and lawyers with limited appellate experience. This handbook is not intended to replace the Rules of Appellate Procedure and should not be cited as legal authority. You must rely on the rules and case law as legal authority. The Rules of Appellate Procedure are contained in Chapter 809 of the Wisconsin Statutes, which is available at www.legis.state.wi.us/statutes/Stat0809.pdf. You may also want to consult the court's Internal Operating Procedures (IOPs), which are published periodically and are available at www.wicourts.gov/sc/IOPSC.pdf. This handbook reflects
the rules and case law as they exist on January 1, 2006. The rules and case law are always subject to change, and should be consulted for changes. This handbook is available in an alternative format upon request.

Thanks to my colleagues, Bill Ebbott and Margaret Booth for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check out Yahoo News for more on Justice Breyer's entertaining interview on National Public Radio's "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me."

Being the funniest Supreme Court justice, he said, "is like being one of the shortest tall people."

Better yet, listen to the Show.

Source: Findlaw's Practice Paper

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An article in Monday's New York Times opens with the provocative quote:

"I haven't opened up a law review in years," said Chief Judge Dennis G. Jacobs of the federal appeals court in New York. "No one speaks of them. No one relies on them."

Judge Jacobs was explaining to a gathering of law professors that their scholarship no longer had any impact on the courts. Why? According to the article:

Articles in law reviews have certainly become more obscure in recent decades. Many law professors seem to think they are under no obligation to say anything useful or to say anything well.

"But the big question is do the judges read lawprof blogs?" wonders UW Law Prof Ann Althouse. She her post for more.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Associated Press reports Courts To Test Offering Trial Tapes Online.

The federal judiciary panel has approved a pilot program to make audio recordings of court proceedings available online for free. Although a court's participation in the program is voluntary, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the executive committee chairman of the policy-making Judicial Conference, said he expects the system ultimately will be widely used.....

At present, recording devices and cameras are prohibited in all federal courtrooms... The pilot program, set to launch in the next few months, will put those recordings on the court's electronic records database for download.

See the Federal Judiciary News Release.

Thanks to Bill Ebbott for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

JS Online reports that, according to a provision in the budget bill,

...The director of state courts would be given authority to "establish and charge fees for use of the circuit court automated information systems created under this section." Left unstated are who would be charged, how much they would be charged and how often...

[Deb Brescoll, the state courts' budget and policy analyst,] said lawyers in only a couple of counties can file court documents with the courts electronically. Her office hopes to charge a fee for cyber court filings to make this option available statewide someday.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Justia has launched a database of recently filed Federal District Court civil cases. You can browse by browse by state and/or type of lawsuit or view all recent cases. Search by party name, jurisdiction, type of lawsuit, and within a given date range.

BeSpacific reports that according to Justia's Tim Stanley, there are currently "over 300,000 case titles since January 1, 2006, and they are updating [the database] daily."

Search results contain the party names, jurisdiction, date, and docket number. There is a link to the docket via paid PACER subscription. Links to blog, news and web searches for each party name are also available.

RSS feeds are also available for search results. This is very cool. If I want to monitor all cases with party name "Harley Davidson", I can subscribe to that feed. If I want to monitor all Wisconsin cases on IP law, I can subscribe to that feed. That's just the tip of the iceberg for the searches you can set up.

Although the content doesn't appear to have anything over PACER, the advanced search capability and powerful alerting capability make Justia a very valuable resource.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Paul Bush of Legal Dockets Online has compiled a list of the courts not using CM/ECF. CM/ECF allows courts to accept filings and provide access to filed documents over the Internet via PACER.

He writes:

Since CM/ECF systems have been successfully implemented throughout the U.S., some researchers incorrectly assume that all case dockets and filings can be located and downloaded using CM/ECF. It's important to recognize that certain court case information is not presently contained within a CM/ECF database.

Note that the Wisconsin Western District Court is one of the courts listed. I have, however, heard that Western District will connect to the CM/ECF later this year. It will be the last federal district court in the US to do so.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tune in to PBS tonight for the beginning of a four-part documentary on the Supreme Court. "It is a must-see series that takes the viewer back to the pitifully weak early days of the Court, then all the way forward to its current incarnation as a center-of-the-universe powerhouse," writes Law.com. See the full article for more about the program.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Their Honor is the title of a Milwaukee Magazine article about judicial conflicts of interest in Milwaukee County.

From the article:

The [Wisconsin Supreme Court] rule requires that judges disqualify themselves from any case when "a judge has a significant financial or personal interest in the outcome of the matter." If, however, the financial conflict is de minimis - meaning so insignificant it doesn't raise "reasonable question as to the judge's impartiality" - no disqualification is required. But it's up to the judges themselves to decide that question...

Judges rarely remove themselves from cases in which they have an interest - in Milwaukee County, it happened only 12 times in all of 2005 and 25 times in 2003. Meanwhile, the problem of financial conflicts is growing. The number of cases in Milwaukee in which judges had a financial conflict grew from 42 cases in 2004 to 71 in 2005 and 89 for the first eight months of 2006. At that pace, there would be 133 cases with a conflict in 2006.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday's New York Times has a very interesting article on courts use of Wikipedia.

More than 100 judicial rulings have relied on Wikipedia, beginning in 2004, including 13 from circuit courts of appeal, one step below the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court thus far has never cited Wikipedia.)...

[According to] Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School... : "The most critical fact is public acceptance, including the litigants," he said. "A judge should not use Wikipedia when the public is not prepared to accept it as authority."

For now, Professor Gillers said, Wikipedia is best used for "soft facts" that are not central to the reasoning of a decision. All of which leads to the question, if a fact isn't central to a judge's ruling, why include it?

"Because you want your opinion to be readable," said Professor Gillers. "You want to apply context. Judges will try to set the stage. There are background facts. You don't have to include them. They are not determinitive. But they help the reader appreciate the context."

Source: TVC Alert

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When looking for his own parking citation in CCAP, a UW-Whitewater faculty member was surprised to find a piece of his son's confidential adoption record, reports JS Online. [CCAP, officially known as the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access (WCCA) database, contains the records of Wisconsin county courts.]

"I was stunned," said [David] Munro, who teaches issues related to computer security and ethics... "I knew some sealed records, including ours, had been partially revealed. I had no idea what the scope was."

After a little research on the database, Munro realized that the information was just enough for people to discover they had been adopted or to possibly lead to the identification of birth parents.

State officials confirmed that they were unaware of the problem until Munro contacted them late last year. Pieces of adoption records involving about 200 families were publicly exposed on the state system for about four months, authorities said...

Robert Knoll, Register in Probate for Milwaukee County, said the records were a microfilm index of old adoption records uploaded into the CCAP system for storage and should have been coded differently. None of the families whose adoption records were partially exposed was contacted because CCAP fixed the problem and because only the index information was revealed, he said.

Counties are responsible for coding cases properly so the CCAP system can decipher whether the cases should be displayed on public access or not, Bousquet said. There is no way of knowing how many "hits" were made on the adoption index records during the time they were exposed, she added.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)