Curiae: Digitizing U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs

该项目将收集美国最高法院的历史记录和案情摘要，并通过该项目的网站和数据库http://curiae.law.yale.edu向公众提供。该项目网站将向公众提供美国历史上300个最重要的美国最高法院案件的2,000多份记录和简报的电子版本。超过150，000页的材料将通过用户友好的界面提供，并得到迄今为止最完整，最公开的美国历史记录和简报数据库的支持。向最高法院提交的简报和口头辩论为学者、法律的从业者和广大公众提供了重要信息，因为他们试图了解美国历史上的宪法之争和最高法院的裁决。不幸的是，公众很难获得这些宝贵的材料。这些材料的装订印刷版很少见，很难找到，而且在使用过程中继续受到严重损坏;网上版本无法提供大部分最重要的案件材料，而且使用起来往往很昂贵。除了通过公共搜索引擎之外，还可以全文搜索网站和文件，也可以按项目网站上的各个索引字段搜索。所有文件将免费提供给所有用户。将根据最高法院历史研究和宪法案例汇编中的引用信息进行初步案例选择。然后由数据转换服务机构将案情摘要、口头辩论和相关材料的副本转换成电子格式。这项服务产生的文件将存放在耶鲁大学机构的网络服务器上。这些材料的可获得性不仅将节省研究人员的时间，而且将鼓励和允许进行否则不会进行的研究和分析。

This project will digitize historic records and briefs of the United States Supreme Court, and make them available to the public through the Project's web site and database, at http://curiae.law.yale.edu. The Project web site will provide public access to electronic versions of more than 2,000 records and briefs from the 300 most important U.S. Supreme Court cases in American history. Over 150,000 pages of materials will be provided through a user-friendly interface, supported by what will be the most complete, publicly accessible database of historic U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs to date. Briefs and oral arguments presented to the Supreme Court provide crucial information to scholars, to legal practitioners, and to the public at large as they seek to understand America's historic constitutional battles and Supreme Court decisions. Unfortunately, the public has highly inadequate access to these valuable materials. Bound print versions of these materials are rare, difficult to locate, and continue to be subject to significant damage through use; on-line versions do not provide access to the bulk of the most significant case materials and are often costly to use. The web site and documents will be searchable both full-text and by individually-indexed fields at the project site, in addition to through public search engines. All documents will be freely available to all users. Initial case selection will be made based on citation information in historical studies of the Supreme Court and constitutional law casebooks. Copies of the briefs, oral arguments, and related materials will then be transferred to electronic format by a data conversion service. The files produced by the service will be located on the Yale University institutional web server. The accessibility of these materials will not only save researchers time, but will encourage and allow research and analysis that would not otherwise have been undertaken.