Policy by the Numbers: Courts

Policy by the Numbers

Data for policymaking from Google and friends.

The challenges of court records as data

Monday, July 23, 2012

Mark LibermanLanguage LogBig data in the humanities and social sciences

Court data: (Thanks to Jerry Goldman of oyez.org for background information.) If properly collected and archived, the activities of the American judicial system represent a massive collection of formalized social interactions, with great potential for social scientists interested in the activities of American courts and for computer scientists seeking a large highly-structured language corpus. Moreover, the hierarchical structure of the American judiciary represents an opportunity for technologists interested in modeling consequential interactions among institutions in a large system.

However, the American judiciary has been reluctant, at least in practice, to provide access to its data.

Most courts provide access via their websites to recent opinions, but few courts provide access to archival opinions. No consistency to the number of opinions available: Some courts provide all opinions from 2005 forward, others provide only the last term's worth. There is no consistency in the means of delivering the data: Some courts use RSS feeds, others have only a list of links on a page on their website, others require the user to use a search form to access any data.

Only half of the federal circuit courts make recordings of oral arguments available; a smaller fraction of other courts make them available electronically. No court, other than the Supreme Court, appears to make an official transcript of oral arguments available electronically. Almost all written data is contained in PDFs. What audio data is available is of inconsistent quality and in various formats.

Details aside, a sociologist or political scientist today would find it very difficult at best to assemble a complete collection of briefs, oral arguments, and opinions in cases at various levels dealing with some given topic — it would be a lot of work, and there would be many gaps. And in 20 or 30 years, the situation (with respect to cases now and in the past) might well be worse, because much of whatever may be available now might well have vanished.

The scale of the problem is fairly large. State courts of last resort decide about 90,000 cases a year. Intermediate federal courts of appeals decide about 60,000 cases a year. It's not clear how (and even whether) digital versions of oral-argument recordings, collections of briefs, etc., are being preserved by various courts. It seems possible that much of this material, although now almost invariably prepared in digital form, is not being digitally archived in any effective way.

CourtListener

Google

Labels: Courts , Data , Documents , English , Language , Linguistics , Policy by the Numbers

Labels

2012
Algorithms
Analytics
Announcement
Art
Broadband
Build Economy
Cable
Case Study
Censorship
Cities
Civics
Cloud Services
Community
Competition
Connectivity
Content Creators
Copia Institute
Copyright
Courts
Create Jobs
Creativity
Cultural Exchange
Culture
Dalberg
Data
Data Localization
Data Science
Data Visualization
DataKind
Datastore
Debate
Digital Divide
Disabilities
Discovery
Discussion
Documents
Droids
Economics
Education
EFF
Elections
Employment
Encryption
English
Entrepreneurship
Ethnography
European Union
Evaluation
Event
Explore Future
Family
Fiber
Finance
Food
Foreign Aid
Free Expression
Future of Music
Global Development
GOOD Magazine
Google
Government
Government 2.0
Government Surveillance
Guardian
Hangouts on Air
Healthcare
Highlights
Housing
Hunger
Improve Lives
Inclusion
India
Innovation
Interconnection
Intermediary Liability
Internet access
Internet of Things
ISPs
Language
Lawful Access
Linguistics
M-Lab
Maps
Methodology
Mobile
Municipalities
Music
Net Neutrality
Network
News
OECD
Open Data
Oxera
Oxford Internet Institute
Policy by the Numbers
Policy Fellowship
Policymaking
Political Campaigns
Politics
Privacy
Public Data
Publishing
Research
RIAA
RNIB
Robots
San Francisco
Science
Section 215
Security
Small Business
Social good
Social Media
Society
Space Exploration
Spectrum
sports
Start-ups
States
statistics
Study
Suicide prevention
Surveillance Reform
Telecom
Theory
Traffic
Transparency
Transparency Report
Transportation
UK
Urban Innovation
Video
Vision impairment
Weekly Roundup
World Bank
Writing
Youth
Zero1

Feed

Disclaimer

The authors of these posts include Googlers and guest bloggers. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent Google’s views. We hope the numbers presented will inspire meaningful conversations and inform policy debates.

Company-wide

Public Policy Blog
Research Blog
Student Blog

Products

Official Android Blog
Chrome Blog
Lat Long Blog

Developers

Developers Blog
Ads Developer Blog
Android Developers Blog

Google
Privacy
Terms