Case Studies/Public.Resource.Org
Practical access for all Americans to legal cases and material is essential to the rule of law. The Legal Commons is an important step in reducing the barriers to efective representation of average citizens and public interest advocates. — David Boies (http://www.scribd.com/doc/3385002/18-million-pages-of-case-law)
Overview
Public.Resource.Org is a nonprofit organization working to make government information more accessible to the public. Public.Resource.Org, working with Fastcase, Inc. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), delivered 1.8 million pages of U.S. Courts of Appeals decisions since 1950 back into the public domain.
License Usage
Public.Resource.Org officially waived all copyright restrictions to the case law using the CC0 public domain waiver.
Motivations
Works by the U.S. government are in the public domain, but not necessarily accessible to the public. Carl Malamud’s Public.Resource.Org has worked to rectify this by releasing 1.8 million pages of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present, into the public domain using the CC0 public domain waiver.