Justia Law Review

Hi Friends,

Here is a great new free case law project that came out (or at least I was made aware of :) a few weeks ago. AltLaw.

Right now AltLaw is focused on getting up the Federal appellate opinions online (US Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Courts). They have aggregated opinions for the last 15 years or so (depending on the court), and have done good job presenting the cases in formated text, in addition to providing the original pdf and in a text only format. It looks like these are the slip opinions, but they can be later fixed up to match the text of the official published opinions.

AltLaw is a joint project of Columbia Law School's Program on Law and Technology, and the Colorado Law School's Silicon Flatirons Program. From the about page.... AltLaw's code was/is written by Stuart Sierra and Professor Paul Ohm, with help from Luis Villa, and produced by Professor Tim Wu. And of course the Federal Judges who wrote the original opinions :)

My take is that one of the keys for free case law will be working with the courts to get them to publish their official final opinions online in their final form. 99.99% of the work has been done (trial, briefs, drafts, slip opinion), we just need to ask (beg?) the judiciary to make the last few text changes to the slip opinion, declare it official and put it online. Ideally this would include a form that can be cited at the time of online publication. Professor Wu clerked for Judge Richard Posner, so maybe he can help influence this influential judge from his previous positions regarding a public domain paragraph citation system (see HyperLaw - Judge Richard Posner's letter (pro West citation system, anti-paragraph citation system), Judge Stephen Williams' letter (pro West/slip opinion page citation system, anti-paragraph citation system) and then contrast to HyperLaw's Alan Sugarman's response/letter to Judge Posner). If the final official published decisions are always being made and published first by Thomson-West, then all other publishers will be at a serious disadvantage.

I will repeat one more time for emphasis... It is KEY that NEW official final versions of opinions are placed online for free in a format that can be cited. That is as important as getting the older previous decisions online in their official form, because it takes us forward.

AltLaw is definitely a worthwhile project. You can read more on AltLAw from on Tim's blog. Onward and onward as they say...

Peace,

Tim

:: Free Bird, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Hi Friends,

One of the cases of interest here in Palo Alto land is the current lawsuit by the founders of ConnectU against Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook gang. In an interesting side light to the case, NYT's John Markoff has written an article on Aaron Greenspan, who developed a social facebook network, called houseSYSTEM, while at Harvard... before either ConnectU or Facebook. The article also covers what Aaron is doing now, including his new company called Qubescape, and a social networking site called Common Room. Of course there is much more about Aaron, Facebook, ConnectU on the blogsphere.

And according to John's article, Aaron has chosen not to be a witness in the following cases...

Connectu, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc. et al in the Massachusetts Federal District Court, filings and other documents.

The Facebook, Inc. v. Connectu, LLC et al in the California Northern Federal District, filings and other documents Court.

Finally here is a 2001 article from the Jamaica Observer about a company Aaron started that used some of its proceeds to send computers to students in Jamaica.

In any case the article "Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges" is an interesting profile of Aaron. I wish him good luck on his new company and projects!

Peace,

Tim

:: If You're Happy and You Know It, My First Album by My First Album Performers