To: The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate
Non-working Citation Links in Supreme Court Opinions
Congress should require that the U.S. Supreme Court shall permanently archive for public review the Internet sources cited as legal authority in its judicial opinions on both its own website and on the Library of Congress website. Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court should submit a print version of the cited Internet materials for additional archival storage at the Library of Congress, which shall annually publish each year's submitted printed versions of Internet citations in a printed Internet Citation Reporter, available to libraries and to the public.
Why is this important?
A recent examination of U.S. Supreme Court opinions issued during the years 1996 to 2010, where the Court had made a citation to an Internet link as supporting authority for their opinion, revealed that almost one-third (29%) of the websites no longer worked (aka "Link Rot"). Additionally, because Internet web pages can potentially be later changed, it may be difficult (or impossible) to know which cited website links, even if still working, contain identical information to that which was relied upon by the Court in their original Internet citation.
Source: "Something Rotten in the State of Legal Citation: The Life Span of a United States Supreme Court Citation Containing an Internet Link (1996 - 2010)", Yale Journal of Law and Technology (Volume 15, Issue 2, Article 2), published in 2013.
Source: "Something Rotten in the State of Legal Citation: The Life Span of a United States Supreme Court Citation Containing an Internet Link (1996 - 2010)", Yale Journal of Law and Technology (Volume 15, Issue 2, Article 2), published in 2013.