For the past 50-plus years, civil rights litigation has greatly affected Americans’ lives. It has secured our Constitutional rights.
And it has dramatically improved many of our public and private institutions, among them government organizations, schools, prisons, mental health facilities, police departments, child welfare agencies and large and small employers.
Photo by David Kilper
A leading authority on prisons and inmate litigation, Margo Schlanger, J.D., (left), professor of law, teamed with colleagues and students to create an electronic library of documents related to civil rights injunctive cases. Pictured with Schlanger are (from left) law students Josh Altman and Greg Venker, and Troy DeArmitt, research technologist for the Center for Empirical Research in the Law.
Consider the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation of public education, transforming American schooling, politics and life.
“Brown is unique,” explained law professor Margo Schlanger, J.D., “but cases that followed on its heels similarly closed some institutions and opened others; dominated local and state budgets on occasion; and set regulations that have affected many millions of people.”
Nonetheless, Schlanger said, information about these cases has been exceedingly difficult to locate.
Until now. To begin to remedy this problem, Schlanger teamed with colleagues and students to create a free electronic library that makes available to the public for the first time a large body of civil rights cases and the settlements, court orders, opinions, case study research, key filings and other documents.
Called the “Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse,” the repository houses thousands of documents related to more than 1,000 civil rights injunctive cases — those seeking policy or operational change (as opposed to monetary awards).
The first major project sponsored by the School of Law’s new Center for Empirical Research in the Law, it opened this week for public access at clearinghouse.wustl.edu.
“The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse marks the fruition of an exciting collaboration,” said Kent D. Syverud, J.D., dean and the Ethan A.H. Shepley University Professor at the School of Law.
“It uses cutting-edge Internet database methods in what is truly a multidisciplinary project. Its development has involved faculty, students and technicians in both the law school and Arts & Sciences, and it will benefit researchers, teachers, students and participants in many policy areas and academic disciplines.”
The clearinghouse’s cases involve prisons and jails, mental retardation and mental-health facilities, policing, nursing-home conditions, election and voting rights, and immigration and school desegregation, among others.
“These are among critical cases that regulate our public institutions, setting the terms on which they operate — but it has been extremely difficult for any but the most determined researchers to find out the key facts and results of the cases,” Schlanger said.
Liberty, justice for all
A leading authority on civil rights litigation, Schlanger said that court records can be a treasure trove for those inside and outside of the legal profession.
“They can serve as important information sources not only for legal researchers, but also for historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, students, teachers, advocates and policymakers,” she said.
“The struggle to define civil rights in America is central to our ongoing effort both to understand and express the values that define us as a people,” offered Wayne Fields, Ph.D., the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English in Arts & Sciences. Fields also directs the American Culture Studies Program in Arts & Sciences, which contributed to the development of the Clearinghouse Web site.
“Our legal system mirrors the ongoing effort that lies at the heart of the ‘experiment’ set in motion by the founders more than two centuries ago,” Fields said. “The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse provides a most valuable perspective on this remarkable process.”
Schlanger noted the groups that stand to benefit by accessing the clearinghouse collection:
• Policymakers interested in corrections, education, housing and other areas can view plans and reforms that have been implemented in other jurisdictions, drawing on previously unavailable court decrees that have served as a source of regulatory innovation.
• Attorneys and judges can use the collection as a tool for designing remedies. A search for a specific type of case, for example, will provide insights into actions that others have taken.
• Researchers and analysts will better understand the interplay between law and public policy and can examine the course of litigation, as well as post-decree and oversight activity.
• Law professors can draw on the repository to teach students about the complexities of litigation, providing examples of the many documents involved in civil rights cases.
• Students high-school age and older can make important connections between the legal system and the workings of institutions and organizations.
• The general public will learn about the rules under which the public institutions in their lives operate.
A democratic success
To build the database, Schlanger and her team, which included more than 50 University students from law and Arts & Sciences, culled court documents from a variety of sources. These include the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Archives and Records Administration, advocacy organizations, individual attorneys and the federal court’s Web-based docketing system.
Historically, court documents have been difficult and expensive to track down, Schlanger said. Attorneys and researchers can spend weeks hunting for them and often must travel to courthouses and repositories to obtain them.
While judicial opinions and case settlements might be reported by a variety of sources — U.S. district courts, Westlaw and Lexis databases and media outlets, to name a few — these offer more of a quick take on one component of a litigation rather than a comprehensive view of the case.
Moreover, many cases never get any coverage. Even vital information about important cases often is absent from accessible sources.
“It’s the absence of good alternatives that makes these court records so important,” Schlanger said.
Nonetheless, the need for preservation of some of the documents is being questioned.
“The National Archives is considering destroying some or all of the documents in federal cases after 1970 that didn’t go to trial,” said Schlanger.
“But non-trial cases — those that settle or get decided on the basis of a legal rule rather than factual disputes — can be extraordinarily important. So we believe they should be preserved in an accessible format, like the clearinghouse.”
The clearinghouse collection offers more than archival documents. It includes citations and links to several thousand additional opinions rendered in its cases and case summaries complete with procedural histories that recount important pre- and post-decree activity.
Said Schlanger: “The clearinghouse recognizes that the story of a litigation doesn’t end with a liability finding or decree. There is often continued court jurisdiction and post-decree action and oversight.”
Clearinghouse users can print or download documents at no charge. And if they wish to see a case or document added to the database, they can propose it on a special Web page.
The clearinghouse is supported by the School of Law, including its Center for Empirical Research in the Law, and the American Culture Studies and Legal Studies programs in Arts & Sciences.
Law students worked on the project as research assistants, and undergraduates served as interns under the supervision of Denise Lieberman, J.D., lecturer in political science in Arts & Sciences.
“Because of the work of dozens of people, this digitized database of easily accessible, fully indexed and searchable documents will transform the use of the included records,” Schlanger said.
“We hope that this kind of access will be not only a technocratic success, but a democratic one, as well.”