SCOTUS Search
February 18, 2015 7:38 AM   Subscribe

Now in open beta, SCOTUS Search allows users to "search the text of 1,424,780 individual statements within 6,683 Supreme Court oral arguments."

Based on the transcripts produced by the Oyez Project and the Supreme Court itself, the data underlying SCOTUS Search is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
posted by jedicus (11 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Did we just break the website? OMG.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:45 AM on February 18, 2015


Butts, lol.
posted by yhbc at 8:02 AM on February 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


My first search was for "fuck" and then "bacon."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:12 AM on February 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


I had to google "fuck bacon," obviously. Satisfied.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:15 AM on February 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


What do people do with oral arguments?
posted by smackfu at 8:53 AM on February 18, 2015


This seems pretty neat, though I don't have any specific immediate use for it myself. But it has me thinking about the source material, and markov tables, and what it'd look like if you just dynamically generated resynthesized oral arguments between robot justices and robot lawyers...
posted by cortex at 10:10 AM on February 18, 2015 [2 favorites]


What do people do with oral arguments?

In making oral arguments and hearing oral arguments, lawyers and judges are trying to fill in the gaps of written motions and briefs. They are trying to refine their legal arguments, draw greater attention to important facts in their case, and clarify the impact a particular decision may have on other similar cases (or, for that matter, dissimilar cases).

In reading them after the fact, you may be trying to improve on the argument for a new case or discredit the argument for a new case. You may be trying to understand what arguments sway a particular appellate or (big S or little s) supreme court justice. You may be trying to understand a decision that makes no sense to you or trying to figure out how it might impact a case you currently have.

Oral arguments, as well as the lower court record, fill in context for legal reasoning, as well as clarify what the justice intended a decision to mean.

Also, they're just really interesting sometimes.
posted by crush-onastick at 10:15 AM on February 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


What do people do with oral arguments?

Make dogs act out the roles of the Supreme Court justices, of course. Now they can do better lip syncing.

Or what crush-onastick said.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:16 AM on February 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


What an awesome resource.

p.s., I thought maybe smackfu was posing the question that fffm had answered. (Much like some questions for counsel.)
posted by mahorn at 10:57 AM on February 18, 2015


This is great, thanks jedicus!
posted by clockzero at 10:58 AM on February 18, 2015


Definitely a great tool; opens the door to hours of unusual cases.

We've certainly learned previously on Metafilter that taking transcripts of oral arguments out of context can be, ah, fruitful.
posted by The Zeroth Law at 2:26 PM on February 18, 2015


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