JURIS Released
[cross posted on LegalResearchPlus]
The good folks at public.resource.org have just released a new collection on their site: Justice.gov. This collection, once known as FLITE and then later as JURIS, is a digital collection of federal case law. The story behind this is quite fascinating, too.
From the Public.Resource.org site:
"Back when disco was king, the USAF decided that those new-fangled computers might be just the thing for the JAG Corps, so they set a bunch of flyboys down in front of keypunch machines and made a database of U.S. law called FLITE. After several turf-grabbing campaigns and a massive meeting of BOGSATT, the system was taken over by the Department of Justice and re-dubbed JURIS."
"But, the lawyers in Justice were jealous of their pin-stripe buddies in private practice, so they got themselves high-priced West and Lexis-Nexis accounts so that they could be professional. Then, they deleted the JURIS database from government computers so there would be no going back. Today, the U.S. government does not possess a digital copy of the cases and codes that make up the law of the land."
"One copy of JURIS survives, acquired by the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) of the University of Pennsylvania and available under a carefully restricted license agreement to those who pay the sum of $800 and agree not to redistribute the data. The LDC is a group of linguistic researchers and they acquire corpora of linguistic interest to analyze. By prohibiting redistribution and binding their members to such constraints, they are able to acquire commercial databases to analyze."
"Public.Resource.Org has purchased a copy of the JURIS database and we have requested that the Linguistic Data Consortium free this public domain data so that it may be examined by all. The database consists of 1,665 files totaling 3.1 gbytes. The 522 mega-words in the corpus yields approximately 2,091,628 pages of text."
"UPDATE: Friday, 13 June 2008. We have made the JURIS database available so that you may judge for yourself the importance of these files. You may browse the directory or download the 900 Mbyte tarball. There is a compelling public policy issue in the fact that the Department of Justice deleted 2 million pages of case law after establishing their for-pay contract with a commercial concern. Why did the government delete such a valuable asset that was created at taxpayer expense? Why would a copy not be kept just in case? Why does the government not have a digital copy of their own work product? These are questions of national concern and the public has a right to examine the evidence."Continue reading
Alaska State Library’s new blog
I just found out that the Alaska State Library has a new blog called "Since you asked: questions and answers from the Alaska State Library." Way to go Daniel!! There are a couple of library sites that I know of that are blogging their questions and answers. There's Radical Reference and Stanford Library's Information Center. Anyone else doing that? I had a brainstorm (or maybe a squall :-) ) that if there are lots of libraries publishing their questions and answers, we could build a Google custom search engine of all the library Q&A sites. It'd be the best Q&A site on the 'net (no offense Jessamyn @ ask.mefi :-) )! Leave me a comment if your library is currently doing that or you know of a library doing that. Continue reading
Improving Public Access to Documents Act – Hearings
[cross posted on LegalResearchPlus] Statement Of Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, Committee on Homeland Security H.R. 6193, The "Improving Public Access to Documents Act," Hearing: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 [excerpt from the prepared testimony] "We have experienced a trend in our country away from trust in the public to a “need-to know” mind set. A few, primarily federal, departments and entities have either, in a few cases, been designated or have arrogated to themselves the power to say who has a need-to-know and only governments and a few private sector entities have been deemed worthy. The public and the press have been almost entirely excluded. At one point, the Department of Homeland Security even attempted to make Congressional staff sign nondisclosure agreements in order to prove they could be trusted into the inner circle of those legitimate few. Again, there is absolutely some finite amount of information that, for a certain amount of time, needs to be shared only in a limited fashion. The problem for the public is that we have “translucence, not transparency, i.e., transparency within the network, but opacity to those outside.”* The "need-to-share"" cannot be limited to agencies within governments and defense and homeland security contractors; it also must include, to the greatest extent possible, sharing relevant information with the public. The White House Memorandum and this legislation both recognize this by requiring “portion marking,” so that information in a document that is eligible for disclosure can be made public." *Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, “Translucence Not Transparency: Reviewing Alasdair Roberts, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy In The Information Age.” I/S: A Journal Of Law And Policy For The Information Society, Vol. 2, Issue 1 (2006). Continue reading
Reminder: let EPA know your thoughts on access to environmental information
Rebecca posted about this in April, but I'd just like to remind everyone that the EPA blog is open for comments THIS WEEK (June 9-13, 2008). This is a great opportunity to provide your comments to EPA. As always, we recommend that you couch your comments in terms of access, authenticity, preservation and privacy!!
EPA is holding an on-line discussion among state, tribe, and other federal partners of EPA, as well as the public to foster collaboration on information access. For this discussion, we are using a blog which is a more interactive and personal form of technology. Everyone is invited to use this site to identify and share their best resources, tools, and ideas for improving access to EPA’s environmental information. This is a key part of the National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information – working with you to enhance information access. This blog will be open for comment for one week (June 9-13, 2008). The blog will then be closed and a summary report will be posted on the “What We’ve Learned” section of the National Dialogue website by June 20th.Continue reading
“The Nation on Lessig”
This was a really interesting post that I found on the Sunlight Foundation's Sun Spots blog:
Continue reading"Earlier today, Lawrence Lessig spoke about Change Congress at the Free Press' fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, being held this year in Minneapolis. As always, Larry gave a killer speech. You can watch an earlier speech he gave at the National Press Club in March when he launched Change Congress here."
"Not to be missed: In the current edition of The Nation, Christopher Hayes, the magazine's Washington editor, profiles Larry and Change Congress. It's an extensive profile and a good read. ...Cory Doctorow called the profile "fantastic." Hayes writes "playing David to various Goliaths (armed with a laptop as slingshot) is the defining narrative of Lessig's career." If you're a Lessig fan, it's a must read. If you're unfamiliar with this bona fide and burgeoning cult hero, check it out...And join the revolution!"