The opinions expressed in The Serious and The Salty are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Austin Bar Association membership or the Austin Bar Association board of directors.
The Serious
Have you heard of The Caselaw Access Project? I had not. The Caselaw Access Project (CAP) was founded at Harvard in 2015. On March 8, 2024, CAP released over 40 million state and federal court decisions.
CAP offers free public access to over 6.5 million decisions published by state and federal courts throughout U.S. history. A quick trip to the site takes you to an interactive U.S. map. If you hover over Texas, you discover that 250,659 unique cases have been uploaded, 15 reporters are uploaded, and 1,261,205 pages were scanned.
CAP’s “why” really resonated with me. If ignorance of the law is no excuse, why do we keep people ignorant of the law? Because of its “why,” CAP is facing lawsuits from several states suing to keep their laws unpublished. Whenever I think about this, my mind literally stops.
“But, why? What? Wait.” I have yet to find an explanation that quiets my mind. Most people do not read fine print. Are Georgia, Mississippi, and Kentucky (the states I know have opposed CAP) terrified that all their citizens will start reading all of their laws?
Georgia attempted to argue that the exclusive right to publish laws was given to LexisNexis. SCOTUS responded with, “Under a 200-year-old common law doctrine, edicts of government are not eligible for copyright protection … . That is because edicts of government are fundamental to our democracy.”
There are jokes for the making here. Only this isn’t funny.