Skip to main content

Documents Removed from PACER

By Anonymous
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has recently updated its online notice regarding removal of documents from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database.  According to the notice, the new PACER system is incompatible with older case documents from several courts; these documents have been removed from the PACER system.  The affected courts are:
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit (cases filed prior to January 1, 2010 have been removed)
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit (cases filed prior to January 1, 2008 have been removed)
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (cases filed prior to January 1, 2010 have been removed)
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (cases filed prior to March 1, 2012 have been removed)
  • U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California (cases filed prior to May 1, 2001 have been removed)

Legal researchers lacking access to databases other than PACER can still access the removed cases by contacting the individual courts, albeit more slowly and at increased expense.

This move has been controversial as the removed documents include a number of notable civil rights cases.
Training on using the new PACER system is available online.

Update: as of 9/19/14, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has announced plans to restore these documents to PACER.  Details are available here.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

By
Earlier this week, the University of Houston Law Center was fortunate to have as its guest Professor Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College of Law. An expert in immigration law, he is the Director of the International Human Rights Program, and he both founded and directs the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic. Speaking as the guest of the Houston Journal of International Law’s annual Fall Lecture Series, Professor Kanstroom discussed issues raised in his new book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora . Professor Michael Olivas introduced Professor Kanstroom to the audience, and mentioned the fascinating tale of Carlos Marcello, which Professor Kanstroom wrote about in his chapter “The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello,” in Immigration Stories , a collection of narratives about leading immigration law cases. My interest piqued, I read and was amazed by Kanstroom’s description of one of the most interesting figures in American le...
1 comment
Read more

This Day in Legal History -- Roy Cohn

By
Big lawyers have big personalities, and few had as big a personality as Roy Cohn who was born on this day in New York City in 1927. Cohn’s career was spent in the Washington DC—New York axis, famous in the press for his legal and social exploits, his list of famous and infamous clients, and as the poster-boy for every stereotype of the dishonest grasping lawyer. The legal career of Roy Cohn is an object lesson on the use, and abuse, of the lawyer’s power. Roy Cohn was born on February 20, 1927 in New York City. His father was a justice in the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court and was well connected politically. These connections, along with a precocious intelligence which allowed him to graduate from Columbia law school at age 20, paved the way for a bright legal career. Cohn’s first job (after waiting until he turned 21 to be admitted to the bar) was as an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York. He first came to prominence in his role as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg espi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Bar Exam: Some History & Comparison

By Lauren Schroeder
It's that time of year again...time for two to three days of squeezing out all the material that hopeful lawyers have been pounding into their heads over several months - the bar exam. To mark the occasion, here is a brief history of the exam itself, as well as a taste of what is required to become an attorney elsewhere. Prior to the mid-1800s, there were no written bar exams. Instead, the path to becoming a lawyer led hopefuls through "apprenticeships, self-directed reading, and oral examinations." The next phase made use of a diploma privilege, which remained until the ABA began requiring exams in the 1920s. (A diploma privilege does still exist in Wisconsin, however.) The first state to employ a written version of the bar exam was Massachusetts, in 1855. (See Riebe, A Bar Review for Law Schools: Getting Students on Board to Pass Their Bar Exams , 45 Brandeis L. J. 269 (2007) for quoted material and historical information.) Bar exams consisted only of essays until...
Post a Comment
Read more