Daily Archives: June 15, 2009

Dissents from the Bench: A Compilation of Oral Dissents Issued by U.S. Supreme Court Justices

Posted on by
1

New on SSRN:

Dissents from the Bench: A Compilation of Oral Dissents Issued by U.S. Supreme Court Justices by Jill Duffy (Supreme Court of the United States) and Elizabeth Lambert (United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York)

Abstract:
Oral dissents identify some of the Supreme Court justices’ most deeply held minority opinions. While print dissents are published routinely, oral dissents are not systematically tracked. This article presents the results of our AALL grant-funded project to locate oral dissents issued from October 1969 through today, discusses the methodology used in compiling our list, and describes various aspects of oral dissents that may make some more difficult to find. This project was funded by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Research Fund: An Endowment Established by Lexis-Nexis.

The appendix is quite handy for your reference desk as it contains a list of the oral dissents from the October Term of 1969 to the present. Just in case you were wondering: the authors found 117 oral dissents.

Want to Improve PACER? Sign the Petition

Posted on by
Reply

In a recent Tweet by Carl Malamud, he suggested (in < 140 characters) that if librarians want to improve public access [to court records], we need to do *something* about it….
So, step one in our advocacy plan: Start a petition.

Paul Lomio and I crafted a very short petition directed at the Administrative Office of the US Courts to improve PACER.

The petition is online here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/improve-PACER

It reads:

We ask the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to improve PACER by enhancing the authenticity, usability and availability of the system.

We the undersigned, urge the Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) to make the following changes to the PACER system:

  • For verification and reliability, the AO should digitally sign every document put into PACER using readily available technology.
  • PACER needs to be much more readily accessible if it is to be usable for research, education, and the practice of law. Improved accessibility includes both lowering the costs for using PACER and enhancing the web interfaces.
  • Depository libraries should also have free access to PACER.

Please sign the petition, comment on the ideas and share the petition with your friends and colleagues!