Court Records Should Be Free

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Access and Cost of Court Records

  • Many argue PACER (federal court records) should be free because case law and filings effectively constitute “the law,” which citizens are expected to obey.
  • Current pricing: ~$0.10/page, with fees under ~$30 per quarter waived. Critics say this still deters casual or low-income users and makes substantial research expensive.
  • Counterpoint: PACER is used “overwhelmingly” by attorneys, a relatively well-paid group; fully socializing costs via taxes is framed as regressive—non‑users end up subsidizing professionals.
  • Some suggest middle-ground fixes: dramatically raise the free tier (e.g., to $1000/quarter) or segment users rather than a blanket paywall.

What PACER Actually Provides

  • Federal appellate and Supreme Court opinions (the binding precedent) are already free on court websites.
  • PACER mainly hosts the rest of the record: briefs, motions, exhibits, transcripts, etc., which are valuable for investigation, accountability, and pattern analysis (e.g., judge bias, “dirty cops” patterns).

Privacy, Data Aggregation, and Harm

  • One camp favors friction (fees or access limits) to deter bulk scraping, data brokers, mugshot/extortion sites, and algorithmic discrimination.
  • Others respond that:
    • Serious scrapers (big tech, LLMs, data brokers) won’t be deterred by modest fees.
    • Paywalls mostly block the general public, not large actors.
    • Sensitive information should be handled through better redaction and sealing, not de facto wealth-based access.

Public Good vs. Regressive Subsidy

  • Pro‑free side: access to law is a foundational public good like libraries or museums; marginal cost of serving documents is near zero; paywalls effectively criminalize poverty and reduce transparency.
  • Skeptical side: PACER fees function as a use tax funding broader judiciary IT and operations, not just static hosting; “nothing is truly free,” so subsidy design and distributional effects matter.

Tools, Alternatives, and System Design

  • RECAP and CourtListener crowdsource and republish PACER documents, easing access and enabling search/LLM indexing, but coverage is partial and demand-driven.
  • Some propose replacing PACER/CM‑ECF with a modern unified system or offloading public hosting to third parties funded or fed by the government.

International and Comparative Notes

  • Other countries (e.g., UK, EU, Israel) often expose only judgments, with heavier anonymization and less publicity; to many outside the US, full public access to every filing would be culturally and legally unusual.