Court Records Should Be Free • Hacker News Board

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#121

Post by awinter-py » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #66

awinter-py wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is right if pacer is expensive to operate for a real reason but 1) it has high revenue which 2) is required to go to expenses, which 3) it may not be going to expenses (per freelaw project, at least https://free.law/2016/11/14/pacer-revenue/ ) courtlistener is providing a much better service at no cost to the public through donations; it's reasonable to say 'govt is required to feed new data to courtlistener and…

My expectation would be that the costs of operating the PACER system encompass a lot of basic costs of handling filing and docket management that aren't relevant to passive consumers of PACER, but that don't have a clean interface to charge at otherwise, in much the same way that gas taxes are in significant part a tax to fund maintenance of roadways.

fwiw the US judiciary agrees with you https://www.uscourts.gov/file/62983/download

> The judiciary opposes measures that shift the costs of providing access to PACER to litigants filing cases in federal courts, unduly hindering access to justice

That's their response to the open courts act of 2021, which would have made pacer free.

As a user of both courtlistener and pacer, I mostly believe freelaw can deliver a better cheaper equivalent than what exists, even including the submission systems. (With the caveat that I have used state court e-file systems but only briefly touched the federal ones).

If pacer revenue is paying the filing clerks, I probably feel differently; clerks are necessary components of the system who cannot be replaced by technology today.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#122

Post by lukeschlather » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #42

The discourse over PACER fees recapitulates a very common public policy conundrum, and we should all be more thoughtful about discussing it. In the municipality where I live, we're statutorily required to replace lead service lines[†] within the next 5-10 years (I forget how many). The municipality replaces the trunk lines, and homeowners are required to replace the last hop at their own (significant) expense. Natura…

We know where all the money in this system is: it's in LexisNexis and Westlaw. Each of them has revenue over $3B, individually. Presumably they have some lesser-known competitors. PACER fees are $150M. What percentage of PACER fees are paid by LexisNexis and Westlaw anyway in the course of their data ingestion? I'm not sure it really matters, we could simply restructure with a new tax on value-add services like LexisNexis that pulls in $200M, make PACER free, and everyone would be happier, probably including the value-add legal service providers.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#123

Post by mjd » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #118

mjd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PACER fees are waived if they are under $15 per quarter. That's about 150 pages of material.

$30/quarter, so ~300 pages. Also noticed that the fee is capped at $3/document, but I don't know how often a single document is longer then 30 pages.

Thanks, I think they raised the limit in the last few years and I forgot.

I have definitely gone over the limit for single documents in the past, although I've never been over the quarterly waiver limit. Judicial opinions and hearing trancripts often exceed 30 pages.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#124

Post by skinfaxi » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #115

thrance wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now apply that logic to healthcare. Single payers are able to get much better deals.

Not really, no. Medicare wildly overpays for everything compared to the rest of the world.

Wouldn't a more apt comparison be between Medicare and non-government insurers in the US?

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#125

Post by silexia » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

I would love for all court records, federal and state and local, to be public. But special interests keep gaining more and more advantage over the public in every area. Especially attorneys.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#126

Post by 0x59 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #39

0x59 wrote: post #32

If anything it'd be free for approved partners. Think large legal firms, language model data collectors, etc

The entire reason to have a code of laws at all is to make justice a public matter. Otherwise we are back to blood feuds and might is right, if justice is to be a secret matter. Approved partner is any living and breathing human.

I agree with you and am acknowledging that knowledge is power and controlled by the powerful.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#127

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #101

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of that coin is that the homeowner is paying their own money and is therefore going to actually negotiate or shop around for the best price. Whereas the government is spending someone else's money and then the way the person choosing who to award the contract to gets to have more money in their own pocket is under the table.

The buyer has next to no negotiating leverage on a small (to the seller) job they're being compelled to purchase by the government.

When there are multiple providers their leverage is the ability to choose a different one. Consider food: You have to buy it or you die, yet everything from farmers to cafes operate on razor-thin margins, why? Because it's a commodity and the customer can go across the street.

The prerequisite here, however, is that it's actually a competitive market. Two suppliers colluding or mirroring each other doesn't count.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#128

Post by Scoundreller » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

qup wrote: post #105

Scoundreller wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a protip for non-US HN readers: you don’t need to be a US resident/citizen to get your own account and make requests and contribute to RECAP yourself!

Which types of foreign citizens are that interested in US court cases?

Sometimes products/services you use are provided by US companies, and the juicy stuff is in the court filings.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#129

Post by hn_acker » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #115

thrance wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now apply that logic to healthcare. Single payers are able to get much better deals.

Not really, no. Medicare wildly overpays for everything compared to the rest of the world.

Medicare covers only a minority of the population but (and?) relies heavily on the general US private healthcare system. At minimum, Medicare cost is affected by high drug prices (perpetuated by lobbying-influenced government avoidance of price controls), relatively high coverage denials (which Congress and the executive branch refuse to regulate), and lack of vision or dental coverage unless people use "Medicare" Advantage (which currently gives private insurers too much leeway to raise costs for the government without a corresponding healthcare benefit [1]).

Anyway, I think parent comment to yours is using single-payer in the sense that implies universal healthcare [2].

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicare/how-medicare-pays-medicare-adva...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#130

Post by adampunk » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #42

The discourse over PACER fees recapitulates a very common public policy conundrum, and we should all be more thoughtful about discussing it. In the municipality where I live, we're statutorily required to replace lead service lines[†] within the next 5-10 years (I forget how many). The municipality replaces the trunk lines, and homeowners are required to replace the last hop at their own (significant) expense. Natura…

The problem is threefold: the true marginal cost of a PACER page is closer to 0 than 10 cents; the fixed cost (building an electronic record system) is already paid by the public; and the complication of a price discrimination mechanism would drive up that marginal cost rather than capture true willingness to pay.

This trilemma shows up whenever we try to meter public goods in this fashion. We could, in theory, price public transit or water or what-have-you by evaluating willingness to pay and charging each person that value. However, in practice the invasive monitoring necessary to do so is an enormous burden. We can sort of spread this out with municipal services by (as you noted) replacing trunk lines/pipes with a general fund and asking individuals to pay for the last mile, but that mostly works because the real marginal cost is measurable and not near 0. Further, for utilities, the willingness to pay has good proxies: the end of the last mile is at a real house that isn’t going anywhere. For PACER I doubt that’s the case.