Technology Services

Please note that these materials are provided for historical purposes only. The information presented is out of date and may be neither accurate nor useful. External hyperlinks may no longer be valid. For current court technology information, please see the new Court Technology Bulletin.

July/August 1996 Volume 8 Number 4

Legal Publishing on the Internet

Recent developments in computer network technologies have the potential to revolutionize publishing of court opinions and dockets. The Internet's World Wide Web already has proven itself as a mechanism for electronic publishing. Electronic publishing reduces costs for both originators and consumers of information, allows many different entities working off the same basic content to produce specialized value-added features, and provides enormous flexibility to organize and present judicial information in ways that satisfy a variety of users.

More than 700 federal agencies make information available on servers connected to the Internet. Other entities such as the Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy provide a user-friendly "window" into those information resources through an independently developed and published World Wide Web server (see http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Agency/fedwebloc.html (This link is no longer valid. The text of the link remains for historical reference.)).

All of the opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Courts of Appeals are available through the World Wide Web. A consortium of law schools download the opinions off court-operated dial-up bulletin boards, process them automatically to make common formats available, and present them on World Wide Web pages linked among the various law schools (see http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Ct/fedcourt.html (This link is no longer valid. The text of the link remains for historical reference.)).

The U.S. Government Printing Office has announced its intentions to convert the Federal Depository Library System into a system that takes advantage of modern information technology, particularly the World Wide Web.

State courts increasingly are moving in similar directions, either directly, as in the case of Alaska and Arkansas, or indirectly, as in the case of Florida and Indiana, whose opinions are available through the University of Florida College of Law and the Indiana University School of Law–Bloomington, respectively. In North Carolina, judicial opinions are available through two different Web sources (see the Villanova State Court Locator at http://www.law.vill.edu/State-Ct/ (This link is no longer valid. The text of the link remains for historical reference.)).

Legal publishing does not involve removing publishing activity from the private sector, but allows a greater range of options for private entrepreneurs. It does not require the commitment of new public resources, but reduces budgetary demands because Internet and Web technologies cost less than print publishing, mainframe computer systems, and proprietary networks.

To realize the potential of legal publishing, every level of the judiciary must adopt and vigorously honor two policies. First, court systems must not set up public or private monopolies over their information resources, despite the strong temptation to do so. This temptation arises from the realization that providing public information in electronic formats can generate revenue and that a monopoly is more lucrative than competition in open markets.

Monopolies, however, are inconsistent with the traditional, and constitutionally based, open nature of judicial information resources. They force particular -- usually proprietary -- technologies on user communities. They inhibit the normally rapid progress of technological innovation and raise costs. They prevent the important benefits of diversity and competition in developing value-added features for public information.

A judicial information dissemination policy should include the following elements:

• No exclusive arrangement should be set up by any court
• No restrictions on redissemination should be imposed
• Prices should be based on avoidable costs of dissemination and should not include recovery of costs for general automation programs or for features useful for internal court activities
• Electronic formats, such as word processing files and typesetting files, should be made available to any requester upon payment of the same cost-based fees
• As soon as possible, the full text of judicial opinions should be made available on one or more servers connected to the World Wide Web
• As resources permit, court dockets should be made available through servers connected to the Internet

Publishing dockets through the Internet is somewhat more demanding technologically than publishing opinions, because the nature and ordinary uses of dockets is a database application rather than simple text retrieval. Accordingly, a docket publishing activity must include selection and programming of a database that works behind the generic Web server software. A number of databases are well suited for such use through the Web, including Microsoft's new Windows NT Web server and a variety of Oracle applications.

The second policy required for realizing the potential of legal publishing is a vendor-neutral citation system that is also technology-neutral. A variety of courts and bar groups are converging on a system that would facilitate internal references ("pinpoint" citation) by numbering the paragraphs of every opinion and either would provide a court-generated unique sequence number for every opinion or would rely on docket number and date to identify the particular document. Another desirable feature would be a standard method for identifying where opinions may be found. At least for the time being, the World Wide Web Universal Resource Locator ("URL") is a sound approach. The URL uniquely identifies a server on the Internet and necessary file and directory information to find information on a particular server.

Following the lead of those courts and agencies that have embraced the Internet and the World Wide Web is the best way to increase the availability of the basic information of democracy and to reduce costs.

Henry H. Perritt, Jr., is a professor of law at Villanova University School of Law. He may be reached by phone (610) 519-7078, by fax (610) 519-7033, or by e-mail perritt@law.vill.edu.