Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Update on Access to PACER Records

The Prairie Law Blog previously posted about compatibility issues with a PACER platform upgrade that led to the unavailability of certain court records from a number of jurisdictions. The removal of the records led to strong reaction from the legal community and ultimately concern from members of Congress.

In response to bipartisan letters from both members of the House and the Senate, as well as a letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, the Administrative Office of the Courts (AO) has announced that they will be taking efforts to restore the removed court documents.  According to an article available here from the Washington Post's The Switch blog, the AO hopes to restore access to the documents removed from the four appellate courts (2nd Circuit, 7th Circuit, 11th Circuit, and Federal Circuit) by the end of October.

As mentioned in our previous post, the Law Library does not maintain an account to PACER, but access to federal court dockets and documents is also available via Bloomberg Law, WestlawNext, and Lexis Advance.  If you have any questions on how to access a particular case or case documents, please do not hesitate to ask one of the law librarians.


No comments:

Post a Comment