roundtable: Ralph Nader to Judicial Conference on West Devitt Award (fwd)

roundtable: Ralph Nader to Judicial Conference on West Devitt Award (fwd)

Ralph Nader to Judicial Conference on West Devitt Award (fwd)

James Love (love@Essential.ORG)
Fri, 31 Mar 1995 02:52:47 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 02:52:47 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
To: pacs-l <pacs-l@uhupvm1.uh.edu>, roundtable <roundtable@cni.org>
Subject: Ralph Nader to Judicial Conference on West Devitt Award (fwd)
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950331025211.25964A-100000@essential.essential.org>


-----------------------------------------------------------------
TAP-INFO - An Internet newsletter available from listproc@tap.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------

TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
Crown Jewels Campaign - Legal Information
March 30, 1995

In the following letter to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Ralph Nader 
asks the U.S. Judicial Conference to end the judiciary's practice of 
accepting $15,000 cash gifts and expensive trips from West Publishing.  
If you believe, as we do, that it is inappropriate for the courts to 
accept such benefits from a private firm that litigates before the courts 
and has a vast state in many court decisions regarding public access to 
its own court decisions, then write to Chief Justice Rehnquist at the 
address below.  james love, TAP  (love@tap.org)

the letter follows:

                                             Ralph Nader
                                             P.O. Box 19312
                                             Washington, DC 20036


March 21, 1995

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist
Chair, U.S. Judicial Conference
U.S. Supreme Court
1 First St. NE
Washington, DC  20543

Dear Chief Justice Rehnquist:

I am writing to ask that the Judicial Conference address the
federal judiciary's relationship with West Publishing, the
sponsor of the Devitt Award for Judicial Excellence.  I believe
that it is inappropriate for the federal judiciary to participate
in this award program, as it is now administered.

West did not choose to endow the Devitt Award and allow for its
independent management.  The company is intimately involved in
the award program, providing advertising and public relations,
collecting nominations, producing the brochures for nominees,
scheduling meetings for the Devitt Selection Committee, choosing
the members of the selection committee, funding all related
travel expenses, attending meetings, providing handsome accounts
of award ceremonies, and providing many other services.  A
reasonable person might assume that West is providing these
services in order to gain favored treatment from the federal
judiciary.

West Publishing is a commercial concern that sells legal
information, including information from the federal courts, such
as court opinions.  Over the years West has enjoyed an
extraordinary relationship with the Judiciary.  However, over the
past two decades vast changes in computer and telecommunications
technologies have raised important questions about the best ways
for the public to obtain access to information from the courts. 
Specifically, there is great public interest in obtaining better
access to court information through computer networks, such as
the Internet.  However, there are also many barriers to such
access, involving copyright claims by West Publishing to the text
of the historical copies of published opinions and citations to
opinions, as well as issues such as the high fees for using court
operated bulletin boards, and the failure of many courts to
provide copies of corrections to opinions to bulletin boards or
even to disseminate opinions electronically.

West Publishing is actively lobbying the judiciary, the Congress
and the executive branch of government on issues relating to the
public's access to information from the courts, and it is often
involved in litigation with its commercial competitors, who seek
to enter this market that has long been dominated by West.  Many
consumers of legal information hope that the courts will take
steps to create a public database of court opinions that is not
encumbered by West copyright claims, leading both to more
competition among commercial publishers and to avenues for the
free dissemination of information via the Internet.  At present
the public's roughly $4 per minute charges for using LEXIS or
WESTLAW are excessive, and deny the general public an opportunity
to receive the benefits of the new information technologies.

The recent account of the Devitt Award reported by the
Minneapolis Star Tribune on March 5, 1995, indicates that West
Publishing has been providing expensive trips to luxury resorts
and hotels to federal judges and their spouses, including members
of the Supreme Court.  Moreover, it is unseemly for members of
the judiciary to accept annual $15,000 cash prizes from a company
that seems to benefit so much from favored treatment by the
courts.  The federal judiciary should eschew any cash awards
which are administered by large commercial concerns, and
particularly one that has such a direct stake in the policies of
the courts themselves.


Sincerely, 


Ralph Nader

---------------------------------------------------------------------
TAP-INFO is an Internet Distribution List provided by the Taxpayer
Assets Project (TAP).  TAP was founded by Ralph Nader to monitor the
management of government property, including information systems and
data, government funded R&D, spectrum allocation and other government
assets.  TAP-INFO reports on TAP activities relating to federal
information policy.  tap-info is archived at tap.org.

Subscription requests to tap-info to listproc@tap.org with
the message:  subscribe tap-info your name
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Taxpayer Assets Project; P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC  20036
v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176; internet:  tap@tap.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------

[CNI Home Page]