As the Washington, DC-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has started accepting electronic filings, now every U.S. federal appellate, district and bankruptcy court is doing so.
Please see:
All Federal Courts Now Accepting Electronic Filing
Cross-posted at Law Library Blog.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) Office of Information Policy (OIP) recently (on 29 March 2012) posted its latest annual Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) report — for 2011 –here.
Other DoJ FOIA-related resources are also available online.
Cross-posted at Law Library Blog.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) late last month issued a report on the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP):
Federal Depository Library Program: Issues for Congress
Here is the (March 29, 2012) report’s summary:
Summary
Congress established the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to provide free public access to federal government information. The program’s origins date to 1813; the current structure of the program was established in 1962 and is overseen by the Government Printing Office (GPO). Access to government information is provided through a network of depository libraries across the United States. In the past half-century, information creation, distribution, retention, and preservation has expanded from a tangible, paper-based process to include digital processes managed largely through computerized information technologies.
The transition to digital information raises a number of issues of possible interest to Congress. This report discusses those possible concerns as they affect FDLP. These issues, which are in some cases interrelated, may not only affect FDLP, but also extend beyond the program to a variety of contexts related to the management of government information in tangible and digital forms. Issues include the following: maintenance and availability of the FDLP tangible collection; retention and preservation of digital information; access to FDLP resources; authenticity and accuracy of digital material; robustness of the FDLP Electronic Collection; and the costs of FDLP and other government information distribution initiatives.
The emergence of a predominantly digital FDLP may call the capacity of the statutory authorities GPO exercises into question. Whereas GPO is the central point of distribution for tangible, printed FDLP materials, its responsibilities are more diverse, and may be less explicitly specified, regarding its distribution of digital information. In some instances, GPO carries out activities to distribute digital information that are similar to its actions regarding printed materials. In other instances, GPO provides access to digital content that it does not produce or control. The agency has archiving and permanent retention authorities for tangible materials, but those authorities do not envision digital creation and distribution of government publications. Digital distribution authorities provide for online access to publications, but are silent on GPO’s retention and preservation responsibilities for digital information. These concerns may be addressed in their own right, or in the context of user demand for FDLP information, for which there is no uniform metric.
A number of efforts related to FDLP have been initiated by GPO and groups representing a number of libraries that participate in FDLP. These have included certain regional library activities; studies of the program by a private organization; proposals by a consortium of FDLP libraries to advance the consolidation, digitization, and cataloging of tangible collections; and a study of FDLP coordinated by GPO.
Cross-posted at Law Library Blog.
Updated
Quite a few of us were trying to unravel a few mysterious (to us, at least) citations in the DOJ letter “RE: Physician Hospitals of America v. Sebelius, No. 11-40631.”
We know now that they are Solicitor General briefs from the DOJ (and, proper attribution of these cites as briefs would have removed all confusion).
While the DOJ researchers cite to Westlaw references that we do not have access to in academia, it would have been far easier to follow their research trail if they had only cited to the free versions of the briefs posted on the DOJ website.
The DOJ Solicitor General site has online briefs going back to 1982. This site is easy to use. You can browse by year, subject matter and client. And, it is all freely available — many as PDFs.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has just issued:
Global Parliamentary Report: The Changing Nature of Parliamentary Representation
This is the first such report by the UNDP.
Highlights from the executive summary of the report include:
Summary Conclusions (also from the executive summary):
(Also from the executive summary) Three specific challenges stand out:
Hat tip to DocuTicker.com.
Boing Boing, a group blog that started out as a zine, has recently posted an interesting and provocative piece by Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org:
Liberating America’s Secret, For-Pay Laws
Cross-posted on Law Library Blog.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released a report on nepotism in the U.S. Congress — please see:
“Family Affair” Report Details Nepotism in Congress
A PDF of the full report is here.
KEY FINDINGS:
Following up on George’s post “A pair of lawyers . . . sue West and LexisNexis for reproducing their court filings,” I took a second look at a directed research paper a student did for me a couple of years ago on the subject of vending appellate briefs. The student surveyed 17 jurisdictions — 10 that provide briefs to vendors and 7 that do not.
One of the interesting take-aways from the student’s paper is the wide variety in means by which vendors have obtained briefs. Some states have made various arrangements with vendors; others refuse to do so. For a very few states there is a distinct quid pro quo. Past practices will change, though, as the vendors are increasingly just pulling from posted copies; unless a court rules against such a practice it will only accelerate.
California and Pennsylvania, of the surveyed jurisdictions, both have quid pro quo arrangements. For example, in California, the state Supreme Court used to send copies of the briefs to certain public law libraries but stopped the practice when it made a deal with Court Records Service (later acquired by West Publishing) whereby the court receives microfiche copies in return for providing the briefs.
Massachusetts has what seems like an odd arrangement whereby briefs are scanned once at the Clerk’s Office, then sent to Westlaw, where they are scanned again and later returned.
To write the paper the student called librarians, court clerks, reporters of decisions, and the vendors. None of the surveyed court staff members reported any attorney dissatisfaction with the practice of providing briefs to the vendors. And in one state, the Reporter of Decisions speculated that attorneys actually liked “the free advertising.” And many clerks were surprised that this has become an issue at all since the documents are public records.
Yes, they are public records but that doesn’t mean they are in the public domain. Yet who wins if a court rules that Westlaw and LexisNexis are infringing authors’ copyright? My student thinks that the attorney authors are really the only winners (if they receive royalties) and most of them have already received substantial compensation for writing these briefs and all other players (the courts, the public) are losers. I hope that in the spirit of pro bono most attorneys will continue to make their appellate briefs available to all the world and not press ownership claims (with perhaps some sort of opt-out provision for the rare instances when, for privacy or other sensitive concerns, certain briefs should not be published). It would also be a better world if LexisNexis and Westlaw could also take responsible pro bono actions here, as suggested by Ed Connor and not profit from the work product of those in the private sector.
Here’s the cite to my student’s paper: Bryan Jarrett, Vending Appellate Briefs: The practice, its future, and implications if found illegal. Submitted October 30, 2010.
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the collection and sale of appellate briefs. It presents the findings of a survey of seventeen jurisdictions. The paper discusses how Westlaw and LexisNexis access the briefs, whether they have structured mutually beneficial agreements with the courts that provide the briefs, whether attorneys commonly object to the sale of their briefs, the likely future of the industry, and the potential policy implications of a successful legal challenge to the industry’s practices.
We’ve recently learned that HeinOnline’s “U.S. Congressional Documents” library offers browsable copies of the Congressional Record Index. Given proposals to axe many print copies of the Congressional Record, there is concern that, among other things, we could lose ready access to the great research tool that is the Index. Last year, we researched dozens of wilderness-related bills in the 1950s-1960s. Initially, title searching in Congressional documents databases did not identify them all, because a few of the earlier bills were captioned as “forestry”—a fact discovered by using the print version of the Congressional Record Index. So, we are relieved that HeinOnline has preserved the Index’s utility with browsable PDFs. To boot, they do a great job with metadata structuring. Each letter within an Index may be accessed via separate hyperlink. As one browses, the list of hyperlinks remains visible along the left of the screen, allowing for easy navigation. Thank you, HeinOnline!
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is adding mobile apps — please see:
