ITR-SCOTUS: A Resource for Collaborative Research in Speech Technology, Linguistics, Decision Processes, and the Law

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This project will create a digital audio archive that will enablescientists in several fields to approach novel research issues in speech and languagestudies, issues in group decision-making, and issues at the leading edge ofhuman communication scholarship. The Supreme Court of the United States(SCOTUS) has been recording its public proceedings since 3 October 1955.These recordings - now in the National Archives - span nearly five decadesand consist principally of oral arguments in which justices and attorneysengage in various forms of persuasion and communication between bench andbar and, obliquely, among the justices themselves. The arguments have beentranscribed professionally across the entire period, creating a matchlesscollection of audio materials coupled with highly accurate transcripts. Theaudio - along with other activities captured on audio such as theannouncement of opinions - offers a unique opportunity for researchersacross a wide spectrum of disciplines to engage in novel and transformingresearch projects that were once thought beyond the reach of investigators.The chief result of this work will be a complete and continuing archive ofmore than six thousand hours of SCOTUS audio. It will provide synchronized(i.e., time-coded) transcripts of the collection, identify and tagindividual speakers, build new mark-up tools for these new domains, andshare the corpus with researchers and faculty. The result of thisinteraction among political scientists, legal scholars, linguists, andcomputer scientists will yield: new knowledge in the modeling ofmulti-party discussions with complex goals, novel strategies in small group decisionprocess analysis, and path-breaking approaches to extended collaborativecommentary addressing the dynamics of human communication.The SCOTUS archive will be maintained as a shared public resource toenhance study and understanding of the Supreme Court of the United States. It willbe available to anyone with World Wide Web access. Based on pastexperience, principal audiences include: researchers across diverse domains, teachersand students, lawyers and litigants, and the visually- andhearing-impaired.Today, more than a million unique users access selected SCOTUS materialseach month. With a complete and updated SCOTUS archive and improved abilityto query and search, the number of users should expand substantially.By exploiting common interest and beneficial interactions among diverseresearch communities, this project will create a vast collection of digitalobjects. Working with partners experienced in data-sharing, the effort aimsat revolutionizing the ability to collaborate with physically distributedteams of researchers and their students.