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Daily Archives: November 13, 2013

64 Federal Courts Now Publish Opinions on FDsys

News release: “A project providing free online access to federal court opinions has expanded to include 64 courts. The federal Judiciary and the Government Printing Office partner through the GPO’s Federal Digital System, FDsys, to provide public access to more than 750,000 opinions, many dating back to 2004. The Judicial Conference approved national implementation of the project in September 2012, expanding participation from the original 29 courts. FDsys currently contains opinions from 8 appellate courts, 20 district courts, and 35 bankruptcy courts. Federal court opinions are one of the most heavily used collections on FDsys, with millions of retrievals each month. Opinions are pulled nightly from the courts’ Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) systems and sent to the GPO, where they are posted on the FDsys website. Collections on FDsys are divided into appellate, district or bankruptcy court opinions and are text-searchable across courts. FDsys also allows embedded animation and audio – an innovation previously only available with opinions posted on a court’s own website or on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER). While the public already can view federal court opinions for free on PACER, the FDSys project presents just another way to make court-related information more accessible to the public.”

FAA Releases Drone Roadmap, Privacy Not Required for Test Sites

EPIC – “In a press release, the Federal Aviation Administration announced the “roadmap” for the integration of drones into domestic airspace. After considering numerous public comments on the privacy impact of aerial drones, the FAA proposed a regulation that requires test site operators to develop privacy policies but does not require any specific baseline privacy protections. The FAA rulemaking came… Continue Reading

Report – Telecoms plan shielded European Internet

Via Deutsche Welle: “Deutsche Telekom says the scandal over US and British eavesdropping has prompted German providers to contemplate an inner-German or inner-European Internet. Data would no longer be routed and stored via other continents.  Germany’s state-backed Telekom confirmed on Sunday that German providers were discussing an Internet confined within Europe’s “Schengen” countries. One project code-named… Continue Reading

CBO – The Distribution of Federal Spending and Taxes in 2006

“In previous reports, CBO analyzed how household income (which included some federal benefit payments, or transfers) and federal taxes were distributed among different segments of the U.S. population. This report goes a step farther by analyzing the distribution of most federal spending—including spending on transfers and a host of other government activities—and almost all federal… Continue Reading

CBO – Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2014 to 2023

“The Congress faces an array of policy choices as it confronts the dramatic increase in the federal government’s debt over the past several years and the prospect of large annual budget deficits and further increases in that debt that are projected to occur in coming decades under current law. To help inform lawmakers about the… Continue Reading

BEA – Survey of Current Business, October 2013

GDP and the Economy: Third Estimates for the Second Quarter of 2013 (PDF) – Real GDP rose 2.5 percent after rising 1.1 percent in the first quarter of 2013. Business investment and exports turned up. Inventory investment and consumer spending slowed. Real Inventories, Sales, and Inventory-Sales Ratios for Manufacturing and Trade for the Fourth Quarter of 2009… Continue Reading

A Report by Americans for Financial Reform and the Roosevelt Institute

“More than five years after the financial crisis, there is still an open debate about what it would mean to have a financial sector that works for the benefit of the real economy, and how close we are to achieving that. In An Unfinished Mission: Making Wall Street Work For Us, Americans for Financial Reform and the Roosevelt Institute… Continue Reading

PWC – Stress testing: Failures on the horizon?

“On November 1, 2013, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (“Fed”), along with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, released documents pertaining to the capital stress testing requirements under the Dodd-Frank Act. One set of documents contained the stress test macroeconomic scenarios (i.e., baseline, severe, and severely adverse) and instructions that outline the… Continue Reading

Lawyering in the Shadow of Data

Lawyering in the Shadow of Data, Drury D. Stevenson – South Texas College of Law; Nicholas J. Wagoner  – South Texas College of Law Alumni. September 12, 2013 “Attorney bargaining has traditionally taken place in the shadow of trial, as litigants alter their pretrial behavior — including their willingness to negotiate a settlement — based on perceptions of likely outcomes… Continue Reading