You ask what is actually a somewhat complicated question.

Next to where you see the outcome of 5-4, you will see language like “affirmed and remanded” or “reversed and remanded.” Before the case was heard by the Supreme Court, it was heard by a lower court — maybe one of the Courts of Appeal or state Supreme Courts. That lower court reached a decision, which the Supreme Court has agreed to review.

It is that lower court decision that the Supreme Court voted on. The Court could vote to uphold (i.e., affirm) or overturn (i.e., reverse) the lower court’s decision. The number 5-4 indicates how many justices voted to affirm — 5 — and how many voted to overturn — 4.

Almost all of the time, that lower court decision wasn’t the first time a Court had reached a decision. There was an even lower court decision — a decision by a trial court.

So, what you normally have is a decision by a trial court, then a court of appeal, then the U.S. Supreme Court. If the case originated in a state court, you have yet another court that has looked at the decision before it began this entire process.

As a result, the information as to who was the original plaintiff or defendant isn’t always obvious. You need to read the final opinion to find out.

[You didn't ask this directly, but there's a bit more to the story. The vote 5-4 only has to do with the result in the case, that is, whether the earlier decision was upheld or overturned. It says nothing about the reasoning the Court used to reach its decision. That is a lot more complicated, so if you click on the hyperlink on 5-4, it would take you to a page that explains in greater detail the reasoning behind the justice's decisions.]

I agree with you that the Court should make sure the PDFs are scanned properly — not as images — so their contents should be readable through automated systems. I would add, however, that the Court uses PDFs in inappropriate ways.

My understanding is that the main purpose of a PDF is to preserve a document’s formating. When the document contains basic information, such as a short biography of a justice or argument schedule, it doesn’t make sense to force a user to open the PDF to get at the info. It should accessible by a click, not just a click and download. (Particularly when you then have to have a PDF reader on your computer as well). My suggestion would be to have both formats available.

Jackson:

Thanks for the comment. We’re looking for ways to make the contents understandable at a glance, without oversimplifying or beating users over the head with it. There may be other ways to do so, and we welcome your ideas.

Mark:

Thank you for your kind words.

Anything that opens up government makes a lot of sense, and a blog could really help the Court interface with the modern world.

I would love it if the Court were willing to work with the public to determine what its site should look like. I only wish they would be as willing as the Australian government has been — particularly the very cool Future Melbourne initiative. http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au/wiki/view/FMPlan

By the way, there’s been a couple of news reports on this blog post.

* The New York Times “The Lede” blog: http://bit.ly/4iD1j
* Tech President: http://bit.ly/QvOVI
* FastCompany: http://bit.ly/Baren
* ABA Law Journal: http://bit.ly/7Jecx

And an interview:

* Federal News Radio: http://bit.ly/SkrMx

I also second a Wordpress blog (and great to highlight that they are the only branch of government that does not have a blog). Gov blogs often are forced into existing systems that were never really meant for that type of functionality. The simplicity of a blog can be misleading for designers, leading them to think they can easily replicate it. We’ve seen some pretty mangled gov blogs here in Australia that in the end give the tool/process a bad name…

The only nit is that a couple of examples of the information design seem a bit forced, like the pie charts in the case listings on the home page. Pie charts are less understandable than just saying 5-4 (the numbers themselves are probably the simplest possible way of relaying the data), and trying to boil a SCOTUS case down to a number and a five-word result is probably only useful to those who are actively following a case.

Sunlight seems to have a bit of an overemphasis on this kind of thing lately, showing wordle charts of things that poorly convey the wrong kind of data, etc. It’s important to remember that oversimplifying data is perhaps more dangerous and more of a disservice than the complex data ever was.

Seriously, though, that’s a nit. The visual design is obviously really well-done, and some of the structural elements (the color bar on the case detail page, linking cases by the statute in question, and the decreased reliance on PDF) would really drive the court forward. Looking forward to the next installment!

It’s much better to invest in making sure the PDFs get created properly and then simply put them up for download on the site; additionally, when they’re created properly in the first place, their contents can be read out through automated systems that can extract the contents and turn those into accessible HTML or XML for use on the web.

There’s more to redesigning a site when making a government organization more transparent and accessible, but aiming for a content-rich AND fully accessible website is a great approach to tackle the whole of the problem.

On a different note: this design is fantastic, beautiful and modern yet stylish and very fitting to the Supreme Court. I absolutely love it.

Your point about accessibility is an important one.

The Court relies on PDFs as a major way of making information available. However, because many of those files are scanned in as images, there’s no way to get at the underlying data. People using software to have the site read to them cannot access those files at all. I’m sure there are many other issues that we could identify.

Shayla:

The issue of PACER is another big can of worms. I don’t know enough to address it at this point, but I want to acknowledge your comment.

Ed:

Your link to fastcase didn’t seem to work. Here is it: https://www.fastcase.com/Corporate/Home.aspx

Thank you for helping to put the Supreme Court’s cases into public domain. Let’s hope the Court will make them all available on its site.

AAinslie:

I will leave a response to your comments for someone more tech-savy than I.

Seems to me like a good way to rationalize costs and harmonize all of these silos, laterally.

Throw the lot up into NASA’s #cloud offering, NEBULA, and you are good to go! See: http://nebula.nasa.gov/services

Exposing these data silos via an online database provider such as Socrata (formerly Blist) which is now a “#Social_Network for people who love public #data”. See: http://bit.ly/Socrata

I would love to hear constructive thoughts and comments from readers of this post and from stakeholders on the above suggestions.

@AAinslie