On August 10th The
Administrative Office of the US Courts abruptly announced that archives of
older cases from a number of courts would be removed from PACER (Public Access
to Court Electronic Records). After being pressed by the media the AO
explained, on August 26th that the removals were prompted by technical
incompatibility with recent upgrades to the system.
The furor wasn’t quelled by the
delayed explanation. On September 19th Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Patrick Leahy wrote
a letter to U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, the director of the AO,
criticizing the move. The letter, acquired by the Washington Post, read in
part:
Wholesale removal of thousands of
cases from PACER, particularly from four of our federal courts of appeals, will
severely limit access to information not only for legal practitioners, but also
for legal scholars, historians, journalists, and private litigants for whom
PACER has become the go-to source for most court filings
The PACER records effected and a
tentative schedule for the restoration of the documents is available on
the PACER website.
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