USA Today just posted an
article
covering the debate over Arizona’s new immigration law. The article is
essentially a roundup of relevant coverage, comments, and the wave of
pending lawsuits. It is an example of the core activities of journalism
in action — namely information gathering, synthesis, and dissemination
on issues relevant to the public. The article is also notable because it
embeds the actual text of a
complaint
from one of the lawsuits filed yesterday. This document came from PACER.
Some time yesterday, a RECAP user also downloaded that document, thus
contributing it to the public archive. You can see the docket and
document here.
As a result, anyone can freely search for, download, or re-post the
document. People can also follow the progress of the case (assuming
RECAP users continue to download new documents as they are posted). The
fact that this is all happening automatically is an exciting success for
RECAP.
However, that success is inherently limited. Although the system worked
in this particular case, there are literally millions of other cases
that have not been similarly liberated from the PACER paywall. Many of
these are highly relevant to American citizens, but they are not of
broad enough interest to garner widespread attention, and/or whoever
happens to be interested in those cases happens to not be using RECAP.
This illustrates the fundamental problem of the PACER fee model in the
first place. As bloggers and citizen journalists increasingly provide
coverage of issues that the mainstream press misses, they need to have
the ability to freely find and share the core materials on which they
report. That includes court records.
Update: At the recent House of Representatives Law.Gov
Event, Eugene B.
Meyer, President of the Federalist Society
explained why access to legal materials about current policy debates
like the Arizona law is critical to democratic society. You can watch
the excerpt below:
Update: At the subsequent Law.Gov Event at the Center for American
Progress,
Caroline Fredrickson, Executive Director, American Constitution
Society explained that although her
organization is often at ideological odds with the Federalist Society,
this is an important issue that transcends partisan lines. You can watch
the excerpt below:
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