Down Underware*

David Starkoff has been on my blawgroll for awhile, but I just now checked out his "somewhat meagre and humble case citation to URL translator." Meagerness and humilty aside, this is a cool idea. The concept is brilliantly simple: if you know the reporter citation of a case, you plug it into the translator and it points you to where the case resides on the Web. David is in Australia and the translator focuses on his courts, but the U.S. Supreme Court is represented. So is the WIPO UDRP arbitration tribunal. How great would it be if:

1. courts put their decisions online in HTML (for a recent example of the power of putting frequently cited documents in HTML see Kottke's version of the The 9/11 Commission Report executive summary), and


2. there was a comprehensive tool like David's?

I've been preoccupied lately with how technologies available today but largely unutilized by the legal field will shape how we practice law and access legal decisions and thinkers. (More on this soon I hope on the Blawg Channel.) One thing happening right here and now (as David also notes): interesting congressmen (Boucher) and judges (Posner) are guest-blogging for interesting vacationing law professors.

*Not to be confused with...