One of the odd things about the website for the U.S. Supreme Court is that it’s not the place to go to get briefs, new opinions, and oral argument audio of the Court’s own cases. [See update velow.]
If you’re one of the many Supreme Court geeks that needs to read the opinions as soon as possible after they are handed down, you visit SCOTUSblog, as it usually posts the opinions a few minutes before everyone else. If you want older opinions free off the web, you probably google the case and end up at Findlaw or the Cornell site. If you want to read the briefs in pending cases, you might visit the ABA’s site or SCOTUSwiki. And if you want to hear oral argument audio when they are released, you go to Oyez.org.
I love these sites. They’re terrific. But isn’t it sort of weird that these sites, rather than the Supreme Court’s own website, are the primary source for information about the Supreme Court’s pending and recently-decided cases? Perhaps the private sector can do a better job at such things than the government can. Or perhaps the thinking is that it’s better for the taxpayer to let a private firm (for sites like SCOTUSblog) or a non-profit (for sites like Oyez) provide the bandwidth. Perhaps it’s just too much trouble to maintain such a site for other reasons. Perhaps — I really don’t know.
Still, it strikes me as sort of a surprising that the Supreme Court’s own website isn’t the primary source of publicly available information about the Court’s cases. It posts the transcripts first, which is very useful, and it has all the docket pages publicly available, both of which are great. But I would think it a good idea for the Court to remake its website to be the first place new opinions are made available; the first place filed briefs are available online; and the first place oral argument audios are posted.
I should add that I don’t favor a remaking of the Supreme Court’s website along the lines of that proposed by the Sunlight Foundation a few months ago. The Sunlight Foundation proposed a new Supreme Court website designed to maximize traffic and seem “newsy” without first asking whether a Supreme Court website should try to maximize traffic and seem “newsy.” (In my view, it shouldn’t.) My point is just that there are a lot of people trying to get briefs and fresh opinions off the web, and it would seem to make sense for the Supreme Court’s own website to be the place for that sort of thing.
Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn’t. If you know the best places to find these items, it doesn’t matter very much at all. But I suspect there are folks who don’t know where to find them who would benefit from the one-stop shopping at the obvious place — the Court’s own website.
UPDATE: Soon after posting this, I more carefully read the Sunlight Foundation page linked to above that may explain the problem: The Supreme Court site is presently hosted by the Government Printing Office, not the staff at the Supreme Court itself. It seems that the Court has sought funding to take over hosting of the site, which I suspect would lead to major improvements.
Mark N. says:
As far as new opinions go, isn’t it already the place to go? New slip opinions tend to show up on the official site almost immediately after decisions are announced. Maybe somebody beats them by 10 minutes, but that hardly seems like a difference worth quibbling over for the vast majority of people looking for them.
October 12, 2009, 12:22 amJay says:
I suppose the docket information system is “useful,” in the sense that it’s the only way to obtain such information, but it’s far less so than the system all the lower federal courts have in place, by which all the actual filings can be obtained via PACER (albeit for a modest fee). While merits briefs are typically available elsewhere, in my experiences more esoteric SC filings can be tough to track down.
October 12, 2009, 12:24 amOrin Kerr says:
But it seems like an eternity for the minority known as “Supreme Court geeks.”
October 12, 2009, 12:39 amApu Nahasapasapeemipetilon says:
I come to the only and best place for news about the Supreme Court… a little green website called http://www.volokhconspiracy.com
October 12, 2009, 1:53 amRandy says:
The GPO bookstore on N. Capitol Street is a hoot. They have stacks of books that wouldn’t interest anyone, plus lots of copies of the federal budget, but nothing that even a geek would be interested in thumbing through, let alone buying. I suppose most of them end up shredded or in landfills.
October 12, 2009, 2:10 amDave N says:
Apu Nahasapasapeemipetilon,
Flattery will get you everywhere.
Randy,
You are right about the GPO bookstore. It is good to see our taxdollars so hard at work.
October 12, 2009, 3:07 amOrin Kerr says:
Apu,
I’ve never visited volokhconspiracy.com, but I will check it out. ;-)
October 12, 2009, 3:16 ammgh says:
plus: it’s nearly impossible to find cert-stage petitions or motion papers — and that’s where some real work might be done, e.g., filing amicus briefs in support of a cert petition.
October 12, 2009, 3:52 amcboldt says:
– but it’s far less so than the system all the lower federal courts have in place, by which all the actual filings can be obtained via PACER –
October 12, 2009, 8:11 amPACER works great at the District Court level, but most of the filings at the Circuit Court level are not available online. I’ve hired runners to obtain and scan copies of filings that were of interest to me.
The SCOTUS website (not SCOTUSblog) has convenient links to abanet for merits briefs. Close to one-stop shopping. But FWIW, I agree that the SCOTUS website can be improved. Just wanted to note the presence of a gap in on-line information when it comes to Circuit Court filings.
Soronel Haetir says:
I do find it annoying that the individual opinions are taken down in favor of the bound volume pdf. Although I also believe I understand the reasoning in that corrections may enter the bv but not the original opinions. I almost have to wonder if having a dedicated court reporter based on printed books makes sense anymore.
As for the lower courts, I almost would prefer that the entire function be subsumed by one provider. Having each court duplicate the effort of handing out opinions etc seems quite silly to me.
Now that the cost would be so low perhaps the government should in fact enter the court reporting business with online citations being definitive. Bound books do have the feature of being static even if wrong. Would hate to see all court output lost due to crackers though.
October 12, 2009, 8:54 amM-Dub says:
Professor Kerr, I have to ask a question you frequently pose to your commenters: “Why?” I understand that the Supreme Court website should reflect the seriousness of the Court’s task, but does it have to be so poorly designed from an aesthetics perspective? The White House website, for instance, has a much better design approach while preserving respect for the institution of the Executive.
Perhaps the Supreme Court is not accountable to the public in the same way as the other two branches, but that doesn’t mean that the site shouldn’t be accessible to all and appealing to most. I understand if you’re concerned that the complex issues addressed in Supreme Court cases are not amenable to the “quick bits” often found on “newsy” type pages, but I have a feeling that issue could be addressed with a few subtle tweeks to the Sunlight Foundation’s approach (rather than dismissing it entirely).
October 12, 2009, 8:58 amPeteP says:
Next thing you know, you’ll be expecting Congress to post the text of bills online 5 days before they vote on them !
Geez !
October 12, 2009, 9:55 amLos Angeles Web Design says:
Yes I agree that private sector sites do better than government sites and therefore other sites than the Supreme Court site have all the files. Good observation!
October 12, 2009, 9:57 amWarren says:
The site looks good, but what’s next? Clarence Thomas Twittering? If he does, he should be careful of what he puts up on there, doesn’t want to accidentally get fired from poor social networking choices…
October 12, 2009, 10:42 amJust Dropping By says:
PACER works great at the District Court level, but most of the filings at the Circuit Court level are not available online.
In the Tenth Circuit, at least, they’re working on expanding the range of materials available on PACER. (There’s been mandatory e-filing for briefs since earlier this year, for example.)
October 12, 2009, 10:58 amSueSimp says:
Like M-Dub alluded to, the Supreme Court’s website is ugly as sin. The vast majority of the world is never going to see the actual Supreme Court, but anyone with an internet connection can check out its homepage — and you’d think the richest country on earth would want its highest judicial body to look slightly more impressive and official than it does in its current form.
October 12, 2009, 11:10 amJohn M. Perkins says:
GPO has gotten its act together, and will do a better job than letting SCOTUS go maverick.
October 12, 2009, 12:04 pmSandy MacHoots says:
You’re seriously suggesting that it would be good to hire some government folks to do something that the market is already doing at no cost to the taxpayers? And you think that these new bureaucrats will do a much better job than the private outfits?
For a minute I thought it was April 1.
October 12, 2009, 12:16 pmAndrew Hyman says:
I agree with Sandy MacHoots. IMO, the justices should spend their time writing good opinions, rather than haggling about web site contents or cooking up ways to make their website more than it is now. Orin wrote:
Why would it be inadequate for the Court’s website to simply provide links to the “best places to find these items”? It’s merely an issue of internal links versus external links.
October 12, 2009, 1:11 pmOrin Kerr says:
Me:
Sandy:
Sandy, I believe I came up with these concerns in the original post.
October 12, 2009, 1:12 pmKent Scheidegger says:
At the moment of release, the Supreme Court should transmit its opinions to a number of “mirror” sites so that all the “Supreme Court geeks,” to use Orin’s term, can get them immediately without overloading the Court’s server.
October 12, 2009, 1:55 pmDavid H. says:
As long as Tom Goldstein’s SCOTUSblog stays active, and as long as we have the much-loved, much-appreciated Lyle Deniston, it’s all good.
I’m more worried about what happens when Lyle Deniston decides to truly retire than I am about the official SCOTUS website’s dearth of information.
October 12, 2009, 1:59 pmdanny says:
FYI, GPO has done some interesting web stuff recently, including making the Federal Register available in XML. Check out http://www.fedthread.org/ for an interesting application of that. Imagine SCOTUS enabling annotations of its opinions on a public site…
October 12, 2009, 4:47 pmRandy says:
And why not a bit more personal information about the judges? Their decisions affect our daily lives, so shouldn’t we have a little insight into theirs? I’d love to see Justice Ginsburg’s favorite casserole recipe, and I’m sure Scalia would like an opportunity to extoll the achievements of Italian Americans this Columbus Day.
October 12, 2009, 6:50 pmSandy MacHoots says:
My recollection is that Scalia makes a mean marinara sauce, which I wouldn’t mind getting.
Well, yes, you did, but since you went on to talk about how good it would be if the Court’s site was better, it seemed that you had dismissed them. I’m glad you oppose spending any money to improve the Court’s site. :)
October 12, 2009, 8:13 pmDaniel Schuman says:
Prof. Kerr,
I thought you might be interested to know that Sunlight has listened to many of the comments that we received regarding redesigning the Supreme Court’s website, and we released an update of the redesign in late August, which is available here: http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/08/27/scotus-redesign/
I discussed the reasons behind the update to our redesign on in this SCOTUSBlog interview: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/a-proposed-redesign-for-the-courts-web-site/
The major purpose of our redesign, in both iterations, was to have the Court provide all of the materials that you’ve identified in your blogpost. We think that the Court should provide its decisions going further back than just the last 5 years on the site, that it should post merits and cert briefs, that the site should be more intuitive to use with a more refined search engine, etc. Our goal was never to create “newsyness,” but rather to improve the websites’ comprehensiveness and ease of use. That may increase traffic, but our goal was to make the Court’s functioning available and understandable to a much broader section of the population.
Some of the above comments cite to Lexis or Westlaw (or PACER) as having the information we want publicly available. These sites don’t have everything we are looking for, and erect a pay wall that keeps many people out. We think that the public should be able to access to public information with minimal impediments.
We also suggest that the Court should make available all of these data files in bulk, so that others, who wish to build interfaces that make available Supreme Court information, can do so. That way, if innovators can come up with better ways to present Court information, they would be able to do so. For example, Sunlight helped build Open Congress (www.opencongress.org), which transforms data from THOMAS into more easily understood formats. Making this data available may also ease the path for researchers who wish to draw upon on Court data.
I wrote about the Judicial appropriations legislation here, http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/10/01/scotusblog-interview-about-sunlights-supreme-court-website-redesign/, but let me add that I hope that the Court will adopt many of our recommendations because it will increase the usability of their website. Hopefully, bringing the hosting and design component of the website in-house will lead to improvements beyond allowing for greater speed in updating the site’s contents. We hope that we’ve laid out a pathway that the Court could follow in improving its website. I encourage you to take another look at our suggestions.
October 13, 2009, 11:14 amSteven Reed says:
Statement Issued: For Immediate Release
Also For Immediate Release on the Worldwide Web
Contact Steven Reed:
Press Availability: Mr. Reed will be available Monday afternoon. To set up a time please e-mail stevenlloydreed@hotmail.com … Read More
NOTICE ABOUT PENDING CASE
The United States Supreme Court will decide today on October 19, whether to hear Case No. 09-5926 Steven L. Reed, Petitioner v. Brenda Cirtin. Per Docket Sheet: Oct 1 2009
DISTRIBUTED for Conference of October 19, 2009.
Reed states he hopes they take it: “We are awaiting the word. But if they say no the ink will start on Rule 44 asking for a re-hearing” says Reed.
Reed states that since Home Rule started in Missouri and spread to Texas and Nationally the powers of such cities must be in line and checked to adhere to state and federal laws and Statutes. Reed points out the case surrounds a write in campagn and the first and fourteenth amendments to the constitution.
The City again seems to be veering from the laws in place. In a current election issue language does not agree with the State Law and Statutes.
The current ballot language reads:
City of Springfield Question 1:
Shall the City of Springfield impose a sales tax at a rate of three-quarter of one
percent (3/4-cent) solely for the purpose of providing revenues for the Springfield
Police Officers’ and Firefighters’ Pension system, with said tax to sunset upon the
Pension System fund reaching a fully-funded (100%) status as determined by an
independent actuarial study conducted for the Pension System Board of Trustees?
[ ] Yes [ ] No
State Statue reads:
2. The ballot of submission for the tax authorized in this section shall be in substantially the following form:
Shall ………………………………………….. (insert the name of the city) impose a sales tax at a rate of ………. (up to one) percent, solely for the purpose of providing revenues for the operation of public safety departments of the city?
â ã YES â ã NO
The problem is that the City is so vague that claiming a tax will
continue being collected until the pension fund is made whole is not a specific
period of time meaning the tax could go on forever. Allowing a Board of
Trustees who may or may not make proper financial decisions to decide the
fate of taxpayers, i.e. the citizens financial matters. It could end up being
like the state lottery money that many feels does not go to education but is
eaten up in administration costs. The City of Springfield has stated
publicly the tax issue will be re-voted on in 5 years and that 10 years is what
it will take to pay off the 200 million dollars deficit in the fund. The problem
with the current City Ballot, besides being contrary to state statute, is that it
makes the citizens think it will sunset but in reality it could go on for
eternity.
Steven Reed plans to file a Rule 44 for a rehearing in the United States
Supreme Court as soon as he has it prepared per the Rules of the Court:
SUPREME COURT OF THE U.S. – RULES
..Part VIII. Disposition of Cases
Rule 44. Rehearing
• 1. Any petition for the rehearing of any judgment or decision of the Court on the merits shall be filed within 25 days after entry of the judgment or decision, unless the Court or a Justice shortens or extends the time.
Please contact Steven Reed for additional information:
###
October 19, 2009, 3:28 amMyrtle Beach Attorney says:
If you would like to find information about Colorado Springs Real Estate, visit the Real Estate Book, the web
December 2, 2009, 7:14 pm