- AltLaw
AltLaw is an American
academic project aimed at making federal appellate and Supreme Court case law publicly available, "to make thecommon law a bit more common." [ [http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~cs6998/final_reports/ss2806-report.pdf AltLaw.org] Stuart Sierra (Note: this describes an early pre-release version)] The project is a collaboration betweenColumbia Law School 's Program on Law and Technology andUniversity of Colorado School of Law 's Silicon Flatirons program.Currently the digital access to US Case Law is dominated by
LexisNexis andWestlaw ["The structure of market relations between Lexis and Westlaw suggests elements of a noncollusive duopoly." Wlliam G. Shepherd, "The Economics of Industrial Organization 246 (4th ed. 1997)" (discussing examples of noncollusive duopolies such as Boeing and Airbus and Mattel and Hasbro).] , charges for access to which can run in the hundreds of dollars per hour.The data in AltLaw contains roughly 716,000 cases decided between 1950 and 2007, made available on US Circuit Appeals and Supreme courts web sites, all linked to from [http://www.uscourts.gov uscourts.gov] , and collected by Prof. Paul K. Ohm at University of Colorado Law School and by [http://public.resource.org public.resource.org] .
Notes
References
*Markoff, John. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/technology/20westlaw.html?ex=1345262400&en=9595a4185fd34248&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink "A Quest to Get More Court Rulings Online, and Free"] , "The New York Times",
August 14 2007 . AccessedAugust 23 2007 .
*Arewa, Olufunmilayo. [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=888321 Open Access in a Closed Universe: Lexis, Westlaw, Law Schools, and the Legal Information Market] , "Lewis & Clark Law Review, Vol. 10, p. 797",2006 . AccessedAugust 23 2007
*Columbia Law School. [http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2007/august07/altlaw_launch Press release] , August 23, 2007.External links
* [http://www.altlaw.org AltLaw.org]
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