Econintersect: While everyone was worrying about a looming government shutdown, it turns out that it was announced that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) already had a big head start on shutting down. In the case of the SCOTUS, recovering operations will not be as simple as just “opening the doors” again. Key records of the court have been lost.
Click on graphic for larger image.
Two law school studies have found that about half the hyperlinks cited in Supreme Court decisions are broken. Broken links on the SCOTUS website itself are often to blame, but in some cases the remote sites have been removed. In some cases the key evidence upon which a decision was based, without any other documentation, is missing.
When SCOTUS internal links are damaged the rebuilding to reach an outside source may be a relatively straight forward job in some cases. But other cases may be much more difficult.
When the SCOTUS website link does connect to an outside source that is no longer in operation, recovery may often be difficult and impossible in some cases. Imagine how hard it is to proceed when the linked site has been purchased by a third party and remissioned without retaining the archives of the previous owner. Such a case may be extant for the situation depicted in the caption graphic.
Researching many SCOTUS decisions may now be impossible. One of the law school studies suggests that the court should make permanent copies and archives for all cited webpages to allow access by future legal scholars.
The New York Times points out that is not cases from years ago that are impacted:
Links in Supreme Court opinions are less likely to work as they get older. But even some recent links are broken. A decision from February, for instance, included a citation to statistics from the Ohio court system; the link leads to a dead end.
Also from The NYT there is mention of a PDF format file archive for electronic materials (from websites) used by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. This is a system that could be used as a model for building a SCOTUS records system. In addition, work by Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard), co-author of one of the research studies, is part of a possibly applicable ongoing project:
Professor Zittrain and his colleagues are at work on a more ambitious solution, Perma.cc, a platform built and run by a consortium of law libraries. It allows writers and editors to capture and fix transient information on the Web with a new, permanent link.
The project is initially focused on legal scholarship. And there is no reason, Professor Zittrain said, why it could not also work for the Supreme Court.
Econintersect question: If the record cannot be found should the case be heard again and a new documented decision written?
Hat tip to William Howe, Newsana.
Sources:
- Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations (Jonathan Zittrain and Kendra Albert, Social Science Research Network, 21 Septemebr 2013)
- Something Rotten in the State of Legal Citation: The Life Span of a United States Supreme Court Citation Containing an Internet Link (1996-2010) (Raizel Liebler and June Liebert, Yale Journal of Law & Technology, 03 Jult 2013)
- In Supreme Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere (Adam Liptak, The New York Times, 23 September 2013)
- Supreme Court citations are falling apart as web links begin to change and disappear (Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge, 23 September 2013)
- Websites Cited in Ninth Circuit Opinions (United States Courts for the Ninth District)
