Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Some Federal Courts Post Audio Recordings Online

While the propriety of video and photography equipment in federal courts is subject of ongoing debate and testing, a number of federal bankruptcy courts and three federal district courts make audio recordings of their proceedings available to the public for a nominal fee.

In his article for The New York Times "Room for Debate" feature on whether courts should eliminate human court reporters (spurred by the chaos caused by the recent resignation of a drug-addicted court reporter in New York), U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Kopf casually mentions that proceedings in his court in Lincoln, Nebraska, are routinely audio recorded. The recordings are posted to the court's public online PACER database the same day.

PACER, short for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, is the federal courts' online case docket access system. Access to PACER requires registration, and fees are charged for accessing materials in the database.

On his blog -- a federal judge with a blog! -- Kopf explained last year that his court had been recording its proceedings "for a long time now," i.e., since 2007.

After an initial one-year test of audio recording technology in 12 federal district and bankruptcy courts, the U.S. Judicial Conference approved digital audio recordings as a method of taking the official record of court proceedings in September 1999. Compact discs of the recordings were made available to the public from the courts' clerk's offices, for a $26 fee.

In 2007 and 2008, five federal courts -- three trial courts and three bankruptcy courts -- began a pilot project of offering the audio recordings on PACER. The success of the program led to its expansion in 2009 to two additional bankruptcy courts and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (which offers the recordings for selected cases through its website: example). In 2010, the program was opened to all federal courts, and the cost to access the recordings was raised from 8 cents to $2.40. This led 22 additional bankruptcy courts to implement the program.

Now, a total of 32 trial and bankruptcy courts offer audio recordings online.

In addition to the Court of Federal Claims, the trial courts include three federal district courts: the U.S. district courts in Nebraska -- Kopf's court -- the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and the Southern District of Alabama (although it appears to have posted only one audio file).

The remaining 28 courts offering the recordings on PACER are federal bankruptcy courts : the U.S. bankruptcy courts for the Northern District of Alabama; District of Alaska, Northern District of California, District of Connecticut, Middle District of Florida, District of Hawaii, Central District of Illinois, Southern District of Indiana, District of Maine, Eastern Distri