Brian Carver
Today Free Law Project announced that
it is partnering with Princeton University’s Center for Information
Technology Policy to manage the operation
and development of the RECAP platform.
Most readers here will know that the RECAP platform utilizes free
browser extensions to improve the experience of using PACER, the
electronic public access system for U.S. federal courts, and
crowdsources the creation of a free and open archive of public court
records.
I have been frustrated with PACER for a long time: as a member of the
public, as a law student, as a litigator, as an academic, and as one
trying to build systems for public access to court documents. I’ve been
frustrated by the price per page, by the price for searches with no
results, by the shocking price for inadvertent searches with thousands
of results, by the occasional price for judicial opinions that are
supposed to be free, by the price in light of the fact that Congress
made clear that the Judicial Conference “may, only to the extent
necessary, prescribe reasonable fees… for access to information
available through automatic data processing equipment” when it has been
demonstrated time and again that PACER revenues grossly exceed the
“extent necessary,” and by the 2011 increase in those prices. I’ve been
frustrated by the search interface or lack thereof. I’ve wanted, for a very
long time, to be able to conduct free full-text searches across the entirety of
the PACER database. The research questions I could ask and answer with such a
system. Sigh… But most of all, I’ve been frustrated with PACER for a long
time because it creates a wall between the public and the law.
So
when CITP announced the launch of RECAP in August 2009
I was overjoyed and I became an early adopter. I reported bugs and suggested
enhancements on RECAP’s now-defunct “getsatisfaction” community. I told anyone
that would listen what a brilliant idea it was to involve everyone in the
effort to create a free public archive of these public court records. I felt
empowered by the idea that my own browser could become a tool in the effort for
greater public access to the law. I got something approximating a crush (
techno-crush?) on Steve Schultze, Harlan Yu, Timothy Lee,
and Ed Felten, for the
brilliance behind this creation. (Please go install the browser
extensions if you haven’t already! For
Firefox;
For
Chrome.)
Steve,
Harlan,
Tim, and others that have
worked on RECAP have now all moved on from Princeton to fabulous
careers. When Steve and Harlan began discussing with us the idea of Free
Law Project taking up the slack created by their busy new adventures,
Michael and I were immediately enthusiastic. RECAP is a perfect
complement to Free Law Project’s existing efforts. The first version of
CourtListener covered only the federal
circuit courts and the Supreme Court of the United States. We’ve been
working recently to roll out coverage of the courts of last resort in
all the states (not quite there yet…) but have largely held off on
tackling “the PACER problem” presented by the federal district courts.
In part, we knew we could wait on this because RECAP was already
addressing it about as well as anyone could. We have long assumed that
we would at some point look to merge the RECAP documents with our
existing documents, and knew because we focused on different courts,
these would be largely complementary sets of documents. Well, the time
to tackle that merger has arrived, and in the process we hope to provide
a long-term home for RECAP maintenance and improvement.
However, to do everything we envision with RECAP and its existing
document archive is going to require additional funding. (You can always
donate!) Therefore, we expect
in the coming weeks to approach anyone who is known to write large
checks with this idea: Support us in creating the largest
freely-downloadable collection of court documents that has ever been
assembled on the internet, and in the process, help ensure the future of
public access to the law’s killer app: RECAP.
We’re looking forward to it.
P.S. Please follow @RECAPtheLaw. We
intend to start tweeting there.
See also, Steve Schultze’s post at Freedom to
Tinker.
