Free the Law – Overview
Project Summary
Problem: Our common law is not freely accessible online. This lack of access to the law impairs justice and equality and stifles innovation.
Goal: Transform the official print versions of all historical U.S. court decisions into digital files made freely accessible online. Encourage and assist federal and state courts in making all prospective court decisions freely accessible online.
Scope:
- All official reported decisions of the federal courts
- All official reported decisions of the courts of every state
- All territorial and pre-statehood decisions in HLSL’s collection
- Estimated 43,000 volumes and 40MM pages
Process:
- Get the books from HLSL or Harvard Depository
- Scan the books using a high-speed scanner (~450K pages per week)
- Preserve the books in long-term underground storage
- Convert the scanned images into machine-readable text files
- Extract the individual cases into individual text files
- Redact headnotes and other editorial content
- Make the redacted images and text files freely accessible online
Projected Timeline:
- 2015: Ramp up digitization production
- 2016 (projected): digitize 25MM-30MM pp → publish CA, NY, MA, IL, TX, Federal
- 2017 (projected): digitize remaining 10MM-15MM pp → publish everything
Sourced through Scoop.it from: etseq.law.harvard.edu