Federal Court Opinions Beta Collection Now Available on FDsys

At the request of the Judicial Conference, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has been working closely with the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC) on a pilot project to make lower Federal court opinions available through FDsys.

The United States Courts Opinions collection in FDsys contains opinions from the Federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts. Initial testing is with three courts:

• The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
• The United States District Court District of Rhode Island
• The United States Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Florida

The number of courts participating in the pilot will rapidly expand to twelve and, after testing, to more than thirty. The content of this collection dates back to April 2004, though searchable electronic holdings for some courts may be incomplete for this earlier time period.

The opinions are electronically transferred to GPO from the AOUSC's Case Management/Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) system. With the secure transfer of files, the chain of custody is maintained, allowing GPO to authenticate the files with digital signatures.

The pilot currently is in the public beta test phase and GPO and the AOUSC are very interested in any comments or suggestions you may have regarding the U.S. Courts Opinions collection. Read more...