November 14, 2007
Free law
Public.resource.org and Fastcase, Inc. have announced the publication of approximately 1.8 million pages of federal case law on a freely-available publicly-accessible online database. This includes all Circuit Court of Appeals cases since 1950 and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754 [sic; not sure how they got that particular figure, as SCOTUS wasn't convened until the 1780s]. The database should be up by early next year.
This is definitely a step in the right direction, as previously cases were only available on commercial databases, namely Westlaw and LexisNexis, which charge a pretty penny indeed for membership, and then charge for every search and document retrieved.
How can they do this? Aren't judicial documents automatically public domain? Quite so. And all Westlaw and Lexis documents have some statement about making no claim to government materials, including the U.S. Code. The reason they can make money and restrict their databases in this way is that they do an incredible amount of editorial work and cross-referencing on every case they publish. They're perfectly within their rights to charge for that. What's really happening here is not a jab against commercial law databases and for free access to information, but a decision by non-profits finally to spend the money necessary to make such a vast amount of material available.
The editorial system, particularly West's Key Number system, really are quite valuable. If you find a single case in any jurisdiction which mentions a subject in which you are interested, West allows you to cross reference every other case in every other jurisdiction which mentions that issue. This was true even before the Internet or searchable databases of any kind, making it an absolutely invaluable resource in decades past.
But the advent of powerful search engines and remote networks may make this of less importance. I myself don't use Key Numbers all that much, because the basic search engine is powerful enough as it is. It allows searches not only for words and exact phrases, but for terms within a certain number of words or in the same sentence or paragraph. All of a sudden I can search for terms that I'm interested in instead of having to figure out how the editors have organized their hierarchy.
Big aw firms will continue to use the commercial databases, of course. And they're still needed if you want reliable access to secondary literature. But it wouldn't surprise me if small firms, solo practitioners, and state and local government offices found this resource to be massively useful.
