Not sure how that can help poorer members of society, since most people are quite unlikely to be doing their own case law research anyway.
That's frequently the only way the poor can pursue justice. Pro se representation is a thing; sometimes they even win.
But aside from that, without knowing what courts are doing, there is no way to assure they're acting in the public interest. The public must be able to inspect the work output of the courts if a free society is to stay free.
Legal opinions are free, for pro-se case law research: https://scholar.google.com/ etc. You need access to the filings to see if someone got screwed.
I use the filings in notable cases to help me figure out what I need to say in my own case. The State University's law school library has free access to Westlaw, and other resources (law journals, etc).
> That's frequently the only way the poor can pursue justice. Pro se representation is a thing;
The Federal Judicial Center has a report on helping the federal courts deal with unrepresented parties [2]. My local district court has a free attorney program for people like me who can't afford an attorney. My last free consultation, the attorney suggested I had a case of 'fraud on the court', which is when you get screwed by your opponent playing dirty.
Almost five years ago I'd petitioned the state court pro-se for a writ habeas corpus, on behalf of my friend, the day after I found the term mentioned in the state statutes: "habeas corpus [0]? oh how useful". The judge seemed impressed that she was able to rule in my favor. On returning to the hospital with my granted court order, I was attacked by the security guards and was charged with misdemeanors (the one hospital security guard got unhinged when I took his picture to document the situation).
> sometimes they even win.
My defense attorney was impressed with my granted pro-se habeas petition. He said he knows attorneys who couldn't do what I did as a rookie pro-se filer.
My subsequent filings have all been fine, but the various judges have found ways to avoid having to deal with them. The first judge misquoted the wording of state statutes to make my petition go away. The state court of appeals recruited one of their retired judges to dismiss my appeal. The state supreme court dismissed without comment.
Federal judges are supposedly better than state judges, on account of the lifetime appointments. I think the district court judge who had to deal with me didn't want to, so he just ignored the inconvenient parts of the case law. The court of appeals also got rid of my appeals, without addressing my contentions. Hrmph. I recently figured out how to get a new judge [1].
> But aside from that, without knowing what courts are doing, there is no way to assure they're acting in the public interest. The public must be able to inspect the work output of the courts if a free society is to stay free.
This is well said. My district court filings are all public, even though they ought to at least be anonymized (like was done in Roe v. Wade, for example). I've come to appreciate that my asking to file under seal gave the court of appeals judges and supreme court justices a convenient 'out' that allows them to avoid having to deal with me. My predicament is that don't want to give advanced notice to the perpetrators who ought to be prosecuted.
As far as these pacer fees: I'm glad my filings haven't been siphoned into courtlistener.com yet, as that means they can still be sealed...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
[1] 28 U.S. Code § 144.Bias or prejudice of judge -- https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/144
[2] https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/2017/Pro_Se_Case_Man...
PACER is useful for seeing submissions from parties or the court that occur in pending cases.
Usually this stuff is of little interest or use to normal people.
I'm not talking about opinions, I'm talking about case outcomes, involved parties, lawyers, judge info, terminated parties, dates, docket info, context, complaints. And furthermore, I'm not talking about individual cases. The interest for "normal" people largely comes from the aggregate of PACER records, with analysis done on top of that. In other words - because we can't get aggregate records of court information, we can't run analysis that would be interesting or useful for understanding what's happening. Surely you can see how this data could inform the US in understanding how the law is applied throughout. If not, I'll gladly type up a list of 50 kinds of analysis that would be interesting to normal people.
The people who would run this analysis are technical journalists with backgrounds in court data.
An example of a project that uses PACER information whose bills are in the thousands because of the high PACER costs: https://www.chicagoreporter.com/series/settling-for-miscondu...
This is not feasible in a time where freelance journalists have to do preliminary research before even writing a pitch.
Though PACER is good for looking at submitted papers to see how other lawyers draft their complaints, motions, etc.