Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Supreme Court unveils new website: how does it look?
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- New website
Last year, we made suggestions about how the U.S. Supreme Court should redesign its website. Today, the Court unveiled a new website. The new website is a small but important step towards increased openness and accessibility, although it needs serious work.
Notable improvements include making recent Court decisions available from the homepage, a somewhat more logical design, and an interactive Court calendar that allows you to see what cases are scheduled for argument. According to the Court, additional enhancements include docket files going back to 2000, a new case citation finder, and enhanced search and navigation abilities.
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- Sunlight’s mock-up
There are several areas where important improvements should be made, all of which focus around providing context to the information it provides.
- The webpage needs to provide more information about what the Court is doing, explaining legal terms of art, and grouping relevant information together (such as information pertaining to a particular case).
- It should incorporate a user-friendly advanced search engine.
- Use machine-readable formats (not just PDFs).
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- Old Site
We strongly encourage those redesigning the Supreme Court’s website to talk to members of the user community to get a better feel for the kinds of improvements that would be helpful. Certainly, we would be willing to engage in that conversation.
Additional Resources:
- Blog of the Legal Times (3/18/2010): Supreme Court Unveils New Web Site Design
- SCOTUSBlog (3/18/2010): Changes for Court’s website
- SCOTUSBlog (10/1/2009): A proposed redesign for the Supreme Court
- Sunlight Foundation (8/27/2009): The Supreme Court Website: An Updated Redesign
- Sunlight Foundation (6/2/2009): Redesigning The Government: The U.S. Supreme Court
- A compendium of resources from Sunlight (wiki page)
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Citizens United and Transparency: A Look Ahead
The Supreme Court has issued its long-awaited decision in the election law case Citizens United [PDF], to which Ellen has posted her thoughtful response and initial reactions. I’m going to look at the decision’s implications for legal challenges to transparency over the long haul. These are first impressions of a 180+ page opinion and dissents, so thinking on this will likely evolve over the upcoming days and weeks.
To briefly recap, the Supreme Court examined whether the long-standing laws prohibiting corporations and unions from spending money on issue advertisements or express advocacy ads (that support a particular presidential or congressional candidate) violate the First Amendment; and also whether laws that require reporting of these expenditures are constitutional.
Justice Kennedy, writing for the narrow 5-4 majority, held that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money on issue advertisements or express advocacy right up until election day. Justice Stevens, writing for the dissent (joined by 3 other justices), criticized that decision on many grounds, including practical ones: “The unparalleled resources, professional lobbyists, and single minded focus they bring to this effort, I believed, make quid pro quo corruption and its appearance inherently more likely when they (or their conduits or trade groups) spend unrestricted sums on elections.” (Many argue, like election-law expert Rick Hasen, that the Court shouldn’t have reached these issues in the first place.)
What is clear is that corporations and unions will be able to dump tons more money into an already groaning political system. (We’ll shortly see who has more resources to draw upon.) The decision did not address whether unions and corporations may contribute directly to candidates (up until today they could not) , and left a number of other open questions.
Looking to transparency — disclosure of who funded the ads — only Justice Thomas (who dissents in part) would strike down measures requiring disclosure of donors. But the majority and minority have very different views on the usefulness of transparency in addressing money-related problems. They also leave open a big loophole to knock down transparency laws in the future. (Continue reading…)
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How the Citizens United Case Affects Money & Politics and Transparency As We Know it
The ramifications of today’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC are breathtaking – opening the floodgates of political money such as we have never seen before. If you thought Congress was ‘for sale’ to the highest bidder, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of our campaign finance laws is demanded as a result of today’s decision.
But one thing becomes immediately clear: Transparency about the flow of campaign cash – online and in real time – became more important. While we do not think that transparency is a panacea for the horrific consequences of today’s decision, it is critically important as the shredded system is rebuilt.
Today’s decision underscores the necessity of creating comprehensive real-time disclosure for all election spending – across the board — from when and how often candidates, individuals and PACs report their contributions and expenditures to those involved in independent expenditures, issue ads or direct election advocacy.
Others will opine about what the Court wrote about lifting the limits and other related matters that were at the heart of this case, but we want to focus on the disclosure aspects of this case.
The Majority wrote:
With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests…This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.
The Court goes on to note the Internet’s importance when it comes to meaningful disclosure, saying that “modern technology makes disclosures rapid and informative…A campaign finance system that pairs corporate independent expenditures with effective disclosure has not existed before today.”
True enough, but the disclosure system they describe doesn’t yet exist. The current disclosure system is insufficiently “rapid and informative” and does not make effective use of modern technology.
As a result of this decision, there will be tidal wave of corporate campaign expenditures. The systems for disclosure will have to come into the 21st century. Everything has to be reported online. All related campaign expenditures, including the new wave of issue ads, and independent expenditures and direct electioneering must be disclosed within 24 hours, with the names and addresses of anyone who has given more than $200 in support of the ad disclosed online. In fact, there should be 24-hour online reporting of all contributions of more than $200. The quarterly reporting system now in place is outdated and ineffective—ridiculous, in a word.
There is more to this case that deserves analysis, and more will come from Sunlight. We could go on and on about how wrong-headed Justice Thomas’ no-disclosure dissent is. We need to watch out that the court doesn’t use the guise of “protecting donors from harassment” as an excuse to limit disclosure.
But in the meantime, this decision should trigger momentum toward ensuring that all election-related information is available online in real-time. Disclosure remains a crucial antiseptic to the corrupting influence of money in politics. We should ensure our system is as transparent as possible.
We’ll have more to say, later today.
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Supreme Court Issues Major Campaign Finance Decision
This morning, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in the major campaign finance and transparency case Citizens United. We are still reviewing the opinion (available here as a PDF) for its transparency implications.
We explained what’s at stake, and our amicus brief, here. While you’re waiting for our analysis, here are three excellent sources of insights:
- SCOTUSBlog: will likely have the opinion online first with instant analysis.
- ElectionLawBlog: will have the best web coverage.
- The Brennan Center for Justice: a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on fundamental issues of democracy and justice.
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SCOTUSBlog Interview about Sunlight’s Supreme Court Website Redesign
SCOTUSblog, a blog about the U.S. Supreme Court, published an interview with me on Sunlight’s proposed website redesign for the Supreme Court. Here are links to our preliminary redesign and final draft.
Judicial appropriations legislation (S. 1432 and H.R. 3170) to “provide new information technology specialist positions and for new hardware and software to support the Court’s website” has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.
Justices Breyer and Thomas testified before the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on April 23, 2009, and explained the $1 million in costs for staff, hardware, and software.
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Supreme Court To Release Audio of Arguments in Citizens United To Media And National Archives
In an uncommon move, the U.S. Supreme Court will release audio from today’s argument in Citizens United v. FEC shortly after arguments have concluded. There is no live broadcast. Citizens United is a major campaign finance case; Sunlight filed an amicus brief, available here.
Based upon the Supreme Court’s September 4, 2009 press release, available from SCOTUSBlog but not yet and on the Supreme Court’s website, the audio recording will not be directly made publicly available by the Court on its website. (Audio recordings thus far have never been made available on the Court’s website.) Instead, the recording will be offered to broadcasters via the network pool and made available to press at the House and Senate Radio and Television Galleries. The audio recording will also be made available to the public through the National Archives. I have a phone call in to the National Archives to find out when and in what formats the recording will be made available. Under usual circumstances, it takes several weeks for the Archives to have a copy available for public inspection.
Audio recordings are usually made publicly accessible only after the end of the Term when the Court transfers its recording to the National Archives. The Oyez Project, a multimedia project dedicated to the Supreme Court and unaffiliated with the National Archives, publishes recordings of arguments before the Court online.
Update: Oyez expects to have audio available online later today, 9/9/09.
Update 2: Here’s a transcript [PDF] of the argument, available from the Supreme Court.
Below the fold is the text of the release. (Continue reading…)
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The Supreme Court Website: An Updated Redesign
In June, the Sunlight Foundation released a mock-up redesign of the Supreme Court’s website. Our intent was to provoke discussion about the kinds of information the Court should publish on its site, and how that information should be organized. We succeeded beyond our expectations, hearing from professional court watchers, legal practitioners, programmers, and the general public.Today, we are releasing an updated redesign, narrowing its focus to steps the Court can take right now. The timing could not be better, because the Court is currently considering how to redesign its website. Hopefully the suggestions below can serve as a guide. (Our June blogpost set forth the key ideas we followed when building the redesign.) (Continue reading…)
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Redesigning The Government: The U.S. Supreme Court
President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor has brought increased attention to the U.S. Supreme Court. It also has led us to reexamine the Court’s web site, which is long overdue for an overhaul. In its current form, its web design is suggestive of the 1990s, and its functionality is similarly dated. The Justices appear to agree. They’ve recently ask Congress for money to move control of the site in-house, taking over responsibility from the GPO. This move would allow them, in their words, to “better control and manage the web site and to be able to expand the data and services provided by the site more efficiently.”
The current web site has many shortcomings. It doesn’t contain briefs by the parties and omits all but a few relatively recent Court opinions. Its navigation is a nightmare and its design fails to incorporate modern techniques such as RSS feeds and XML. Much information is unnecessarily locked in PDFs. And yet, in January 2009 the nine-year-old site received 18 million hits.
To help the Court update its web presence, the Sunlight Foundation has put together the following mock-up.
The most important aspect of the mock-up is that it takes into account the web site’s diverse users. It accommodates the general public and students, legal researchers, court researchers, and litigants. Accordingly, we believe the redesigned web site must be simple, straightforward, and robust. It must strive to make the Court’s proceedings transparent, incorporate modern design principles, and meet the higher expectations of today’s web user.
This post is the next in a series of government web site mock-ups that suggests how parts of the government should transform their online presence. Previous iterations have included: USA.gov, FEC.gov, EPA.gov, and Data.gov.
Under the fold, we have the mock-up and detailed descriptions of how the Supreme Court web site should be redesigned.
Home Page
The home page must be accessible to everyone. It should allow for quick and easy searches, identify the Justices, and include content that quickly and readily engages someone’s interest. The current site, by contrast, is simply a picture and a list of links.
We’ve added search box at the top of the page to serve as the main source of navigation. Also at the top of the page is recent news, which allows users to get a quick glimpse of anything new.
In addition to the search box, we’ve included a small graphic and link to the Supreme Court’s calendar. This way, viewers can get a quick glance at the schedule of upcoming argument while being able to click on links for more information.
Another feature is the recent decision section. It contains links to the full decision, the details of the case, and any time another law is referred to. This allows users to dig as deep as they’d like so as to get the full picture of what happened.
One small but important detail include adding an RSS feed to the recent decisions. The RSS feed would permit users to access the information that they want through an RSS reader without having to come back to the site everyday.
At the bottom of the page is basic information about the Justices, which also serves as a gateway for more information about the Court.
Click on the images for a larger view.
About the Court
The “About the Court” page should provide a good overview for people who aren’t that familiar with the Supreme Court. Much of this information is already available, but is very difficult to find or view. Often, the data can only be found in a PDF.
By adding visuals to a page, users immediately grasp what’s happening even if they’re simply scanning the page. We also are again showing snippets of content to allow users to be able to scan the various content and choose to click through if they want more information.
This is exemplified by brief snippets of information about each of the Justices (including all former Justices), and a graphic representation of where cases originate by circuit.
Proceedings: Landing Page
The mock-up gives users the ability to search through all proceedings by term, by name, by justice, by topic, and so on, all of which is unavailable on the current web site. By giving users this tool, they can both browse through cases and immediately identify the specific case they need.
We also break out the proceedings so that users have all the holdings front and center, with links to the full decision and the details of the case. There is an RSS feed so that users can be notified the moment a new decision is released.
We’ve also added a database that contains how the Justices voted in each case. The underlying voting pattern data are exportable for scholarly analysis.
Proceedings: Case by Case
The top of the page contains basic information about the case — its docket number, the question presented, the parties, and its subject matter. In addition, there’s a handy status box containing information on how the case was decided, when it is scheduled for argument (and a link to a transcript and audio/video), its citation, and the ability to check to see whether the decision is still good law.
The bulk of the page is occupied by the case’s proceedings and orders. Organized chronologically — from petition for a writ of certiorari to final decision — each action is cataloged and summarized. We suggest that the Court adopt the practice of uploading the briefs from each party, and add links to each filing or order as they occur. In addition, we’ve added an RSS feed, so that users can monitor the case without having to view the page.
The bottom of the page contains the case’s procedural posture. It includes links to documents containing lower court filings and a description of the disposition of the case. This information is omitted from the current Supreme Court web site, but is very useful in helping understand the background underlying the Court’s decision.
We suggest that there be several URLs for each case page. Both the docket number (e.g. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/case/2008-108) and Supreme Court Reporter citation (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/case/556US103) should link to the same page. This way, people can build hyperlinks to cases using readily available public information.
Court Procedure
We did not mock-up the court procedure web page (or the following pages), but we envision the court procedure page’s contents as focusing on parties before the Court. It should contain the Courts’ Rules of Procedure, a guide for counsel arguing before the Court, how to deliver documents to the Clerk (including a way to e-file), bar admissions applications, and a list of all counsel who have argued before the Court.
Calendar
Each year the Supreme Court makes available a calendar of its argument and conference schedule. We suggest translating this calendar from PDF to html/XML, and placing it online. In other words, users will be able to see on the web page the Court’s argument calendar, and by hovering their mouse over (or click on) a particular date, to see what cases are scheduled for that day. All previous calendars should be available here as well.
Visiting the Court
This page contains basic information about visiting the court. It should include a map, hours of operation, tour information, argument schedules, etc. It could also include a virtual tour of the building as well.
Blog
The Supreme Court is the only branch of government that does not have a blog, which is ironic since so much of what the Court does lends itself to written form. Indeed, because the Court communicates in writing, the best way for the public to understand what the Court is doing is to read its orders and opinions. The blog can serve as a gateway to this information.
At a minimum, the Court’s blog should include contemporaneous summaries of and links to decisions, highlight and link to speeches given by the Justices, promote press releases and media advisories, and identify other major reports (such as the year-end report on the federal judiciary).
A more ambitious goal would be to hire a reporter to cover the Court from the inside out. For example, the reporter could provide information about the history of the Court, the people who make it function, coverage of oral arguments (or even audio or video), etc. Having a reporter on the inside would help demystify what the Court does and provide additional context for its actions.
Contact
This page would contain basic information on how to contact the Court, and would link to information about visiting the Court.
Conclusion
Of course, this is just our view on how the Supreme Court web site should look. Tell us yours in the comments. Ultimately, we will present these finding to the Supreme Court for its use. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us directly.
Ali Felski (Sunlight Senior Labs Designer)
Daniel Schuman (Policy Counsel)
One final note: this pages are intended as mock-ups, and don’t necessarily reflect how the Court has ruled in any particular case.
