1.8 Million US Court Rulings Now Online 94
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "For a long time now, lawyers and any serious law students have been bound to paid services like LexusNexis for access to case law, but that is slowly changing. Carl Malamud has posted free electronic copies of every U.S. Supreme Court decision and Court of Appeals ruling since 1950, 1.8 million rulings in all, online for free. While the rulings themselves have long been government works not subject to copyright, courts still charge several cents per page for copies and they're inconvenient to access, so lawyers usually turn to legal publishers which are more expensive but more convenient, providing helpful things like notes about related cases, summaries of the holdings, and information about if and when the case was overturned. This free database is not Carl's first, either. He convinced the SEC to provide EDGAR, and helped get both the Smithsonian and Congressional hearings online."
So.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:fp (Score:0, Funny)
yay (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, I already patented this process (Score:2, Funny)
My, the USPTO is gullible.
Re:not to nitpick, but... (Score:3, Funny)
IANAL (Score:2, Funny)
Re:New Court Ruling (Score:3, Funny)
I found a group of highly knowledgable legal experts [slashdot.org] who don't mind sharing their expertise online for free.
simplifying law (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe if an attorney had to look at the raw cases all the time there would be a grass roots legal movement to simplify law rather than constantly add to it.
I propose a new amendment to the Constitution of the USA, all laws have to be written so the average person can read and understand it in 5 minutes.
Falcon