Sen Leahy urges PACER to restore access to removed case archives

If you want digital access to US court documents, PACER will likely be your first stop. It's a sort of digital warehouse for public court records maintained by the Administrative Office of the US Courts, or the AO. The service charges 10 cents per page of search results within its databases and 10 cents per actual page of public court records. Public domain and freedom of information advocates have long criticized the charges, along with the system's difficult-to-navigate interface, and have tried to create free alternative archives. But on Aug. 10, PACER unceremoniously announced that archives for five courts -- four of them federal courts of appeals -- would no longer be available through the system. Now Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has weighed in on the situation and is urging the judiciary to restore online access to the archives.