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I actually approve of the something closer to the status quo here. Court filings contain a lot of sensitive information about the litigants. It is one thing for the records to be publicly available, as they must be. It is a very different thing for every speck of material in them to be instantly available to anyone, anywhere, worldwide, for any purpose.
Material that shouldn't be published for any reason is already subject to a sealing process. What else is needed?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see a valid point here, however, some court rulings create binding precedents. As I understand it, those can be paywalled in PACER. Binding precedents are part of the law everyone within the relevant jurisdiction is required to obey, and it is unjust for any part of the law to not be freely available. It may be reasonable to put limits on free public access to records where there's a privacy concern.
At least within the federal court system, binding precedent is already freely available. Only circuit courts and SCOTUS can create binding precedent, and the opinions of those courts are freely available on their respective sites, outside of PACER. E.g., here's the 9th circuit: https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/decisions/opinions/
The current system still doesn't sit right with me. Someone sufficiently wealthy has effectively unlimited access. Someone sufficiently poor with a lot of time on their hands might also have unlimited access. Everyone in the middle has a bottleneck.
I actually approve of the something closer to the status quo here. Court filings contain a lot of sensitive information about the litigants. It is one thing for the records to be publicly available, as they must be. It is a very different thing for every speck of material in them to be instantly available to anyone, anywhere, worldwide, for any purpose.
Then why do you think they should be public?
Consider cases like Cash for Kids. It potentially could have been caught a lot quicker if we had the data publicly available to see "How does this judge usually rule". Today, proving that a judge has is bias is pretty hard, but imagine if we could see "This judge always denies motions when the claimant or their lawyers are Irish".
Or consider dirty cops. Imagine being able to search all the drug arrests of a cop and finding out "Hmm, this cop is finding meth on everyone he pulls over". That's a valuable tool for the next victim of the cop that gets accused of meth possession. As it currently stands, we basically rely on the cop not forgetting to cover their cameras.
Having more data available makes it easier systematic analysis and mining a whole lot easier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that basically the same as saying court filings should be available, but not to poor people?
No. Indigent users can already request fee exemptions, and that can be expanded. Access can be provided at courthouses and public libraries. (I don’t know if that is already a practice for PACER specifically, but it should be.)
That's about 150 pages of material.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that basically the same as saying court filings should be available, but not to poor people?
No. Indigent users can already request fee exemptions, and that can be expanded. Access can be provided at courthouses and public libraries. (I don’t know if that is already a practice for PACER specifically, but it should be.)
I'm being sued in the State of Idaho, where the price of each page is $10.
PACER is for federal courts, price is $1 per page. I'm being sued in the State of Idaho, where the price of each page is $10.
This goes back to Hammurabi. These decisions are the law. We pay tax dollars to create all this and even if we didn’t, if we’re held to these rulings we need to be able to read them.