December 12, 2000

11:36 PM

The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to reverse the Fla. high court's decision to allow manual recounts on disputed ballots. This essentially closes off Gore's last challenges. Now why can't I find a non-PDF format copy of the decision on the Web????
posted by rschram (10 comments total)

It seems that what the election dispute has taught us is that, even in the age of the Internet, you can't actually read the decision right at the moment it becomes available. Unless, that is, you happen to have access to an Adobe Reader (which is to say, not at a pathetic Web kiosk in a coffeeshop at the time I heard about the ruling. What people need is a pdf2txt utility at their fingertips.

posted by rschram at 11:40 PM on December 12, 2000

Possibly because the nature of legal documents makes it difficult to convert to plain text or HTML: the necessity to use footnote referencing, the role of typography to distinguish cases and individuals, etc. Not that legal documents would truly benefit from hyperlinking to case-references, but that kind of thing takes the sort of time the court doesn't have in expedited decisions.

It's all in the formatting.

Anyone take a guess, though, at the font used by the Supreme Court? It's authoritative-looking enough for me to want to use it for my thesis: another document that'll be available to an unsuspecting public in PDF form before I webify it ;)
posted by holgate at 11:48 PM on December 12, 2000

Anyone know of a good place to live in Canada?
posted by DragonBoy at 11:51 PM on December 12, 2000

http://access.adobe.com/simple_form.html
posted by mathowie at 12:00 AM on December 13, 2000

Anyone take a guess, though, at the font used by the Supreme Court?

Some form of Bookman although the "R" is a little funky.
posted by willnot at 12:52 AM on December 13, 2000

Why does everyone keep acting like either choice is Armageddon for the world?

Haven't we learned that regardless of who gets elected it is still business as usual for the United States of America?
posted by ooklah at 6:48 AM on December 13, 2000

We need an XML format for legal documents. I'm sure something like this is already being developed, but it's neeeeeded.
posted by daveadams at 7:39 AM on December 13, 2000

Has Alec Baldwin and his left coast friends announced when they're going to leave yet?
posted by gyc at 9:17 AM on December 13, 2000

Not yet, gyc, but I'm willing to donate all of my British Airways frequent flier miles to any and all Baldwins and to Robert Altman so that they can get their unpatriotic whining butts the heck out of my country.
posted by Dreama at 4:00 PM on December 13, 2000

Can we keep Altman and send the Baldwins elsewhere?

(Actually, this result makes me more enthusiastic to take dual citizenship than ever before, just so that I can help vote out that no-brained fucker in 2004? Does that count as patriotism?)
posted by holgate at 4:55 PM on December 13, 2000