The Oyez Project

I researched the Oyez Project, which is a "web-based web-based audio archive" of Supreme Court cases and other material related to the Supreme Court. Oyez, pronounced o-yay, is a traditional French interjection said three times in succession to introduce the opening of a court of law in Medieval England.

The stated goal of the Oyez Project is to make the work of the Supreme Court of the United States accessible to everyone through text, images, audio, and video. It's an .org, not a .gov., which might explain why it's such a well designed and executed site.

You can also see where "your favorite justice is interred", browse courts, cases, and justices, view panoramic images of the Supreme Court Building, check out an extensive legal glossary, and see what's on the docket coming up. I do wish that it had a category of '"greatest hits" -- all those famous cases you learned about in school.

I found it interesting that the Oyez Project maintains an Amazon Honor System (anonymous) tip jar for its donations, which I had never heard of before.

Selection Principles
The Supreme Court installed an audio recording system in 1955 and began recording its proceedings on the first Monday in October, the start of its annual Term. They are working backwards, and the goal is to make accessible all the proceedings dating back to 1955. As of early 2008, back until 1980 was digitized and online. At the same time, digitization of current cases is occurring at an impressive speed -- cases a little more than 2 weeks old were available.

Object Characteristics
The Oyez Project contains more than 3000 hours of audio materials delivered via streamed and downloadable mp3s. When there is no media format available (such as for the 1953's Brown vs. Board of Education case), the written opinion is provided. I clicked on several cases where the audio transcript was available. It started automatically playing the mp3 on QuickPlayer. However, there was a search field and buttons for "next" and "previous" which seemed to do nothing at all. It didn't seem to search - or nagivate within - either the audio or the text record. I'm not sure what use these features were intended for.

To play everything Oyez offers, you need Flash and QuickTime. The streamed audio version uses a player built on Adobe Flash. You'll need QuickTime to view the panoramic images. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds and podcasts on particular cases or decisions, and download individual cases or sets of cases through iTunes. However,

Metadata
The cases includes fields for the abstract (though not all cases include an abstract), facts of the case, question, conclusion, and the lineup (including photos) of the sitting judges. Rolling over their photos brings up a tag noting whether they voted with the majority or minority opinion. For those cases with audio available, a link brought you to the media player. But once you're on the audio page, if no written transcript is available, there's no quick way to know who is presenting the case, what year the case is from, or any other relevant information, without having to go back to the main case page.

Audience
I believe that the audience for such a collection is wide and far-reaching. Journalists, researchers, students, political junkies, practicing lawyers, law students, and interested citizens.