Feb. 11 was a day that may forever change the course of online legal research. On that day, the nonprofit organization Public.Resource.Org published to the Internet 1.8 million pages of federal case law, free of copyright or other restrictions. The release included all Supreme Court cases and all U.S. circuit decisions since 1950.
Ever since 1872, when John B. West hit upon the idea of building a business around publishing and selling court decisions, commercial publishers have maintained a firm hold on the dissemination of judicial opinions. Not to knock them — legal publishers filled an essential niche and continue to provide valuable and necessary products.
But in the information age in which we now live, private control over the distribution of public case law seems anachronistic. For nearly two decades, gradual progress has been made towards greater public access. But the Public.Resource.Org release is just one of several developments whose convergence suggests that this trend is accelerating. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 6/04/2008 12:46:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
