Justia Federal Court Filings

The federal courts charge an unconscionable 8 cents a page to access their online dockets, even charging for searches that produce no matches, but Justia is now making the dockets available for free online. You can't get the actual records via Justia (you still have to go through the high-priced federal computer system to do that) but you can see what cases have been filed by date, search by party name and subscribe to feeds for federal courts nationwide. It only includes records for cases filed since Jan 1, 2006. Justia also provides quick links to blog searches, news searches and Web searches for the parties in each case. The federal courts say one of their goals is "accurate and informed coverage," but the fact is, if you have to pay hundreds -- even thousands -- of dollars for access to court records, that's a significant barrier to achieving it. Justia's docket search tool thus raises the obvious question: Why aren't the federal courts doing this?