Combating Link Rot in SCOTUS Decisions

We know that link rot is a large problem in modern Supreme Court decisions.

According to a ... study, 49 percent of the hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions no longer work. The problem is that those citations allow lawyers and scholars to find, understand and assess the court’s evidence and reasoning. For most of the Supreme Court’s history, its citations have been to static, permanent sources, typically books. Since 1996 justices have cited materials found on the Internet 555 times, the study found. Those citations are very often ephemeral.

As noted in 2013 by the NYTimes, the Supreme Court has taken modest steps to address the matter. Its opinions note the date each site was last visited, and its clerk keeps a hard copy of those materials.

SCOTUS needs to do better and find a reliable electronic archival tool that will capture screenshots of the web resources and host them for easy access in perpetuity. We have Perma.cc, but the very busy Justices haven't taken the time to archive their own cited internet sources.

In steps the UC Berkeley School of Law Library and web application developer Philip Ardery to address this problem by hosting U.S. Supreme Court Web Citations. This service captures snapshots of any web resource cited by the United States Supreme Court immediately after their opinions are issued. The goal of the service is to leverage current web and archiving technologies to minimize the link rot that complicates research as websites change or become unavailable over time.

You can subscribe to receive updates. Contact Michael Lindsey, UC Berkeley Law Library's Directory of Library Web Development for additional information

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Comments

  1. What is the solution if the online resource is under copyright? This might include books or journal articles. There have also been attempts by certain states to claim copyright in their statutory codifications.

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