This update on access to court documents was received earlier this morning from Jan Kagehiro, Communications & Community Relations Director for the State Judiciary.

Jan was responding to a post here early this month in which I described the process of inspecting older records in 1st Circuit Court, and also raised questions about the accessibility of records which are now filed and accessed online for a per page fee or by subscription.

Ian,
Mahalo for your blog post “My courthouse adventure”. It’s true, we have had to adjust access to legal documents during the pandemic. It’s also true that we could be doing a better job of updating our website accordingly, and appreciate the nudge.

In answer to your questions:

1. All courthouses, except some smaller rural ones, have publicly accessible terminals on which anyone can view PDFs of documents available on eCourt Kokua at no charge. If they want copies of documents, then they will be charged accordingly. We have posted this information on our eCourt Kokua page.

2. Older case files (pre-eCourt Kokua) could be stored at our courthouses (Family at Family Court, District at District Court, Circuit at Circuit Court, etc.) or in a storage facility, depending on the age of the records. The posted information noted in #1 also includes guidance on locating older case files.

Improving access to justice has been a priority for Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald and if there are further opportunities to do so, we would appreciate suggestions. Please let me know if you have questions on this topic or others related to the Judiciary.

Thank you,
Jan

And thank you, Jan.

The new section on eCourt Kokua will help people find how to have an opportunity to inspect records on current cases without having to pay for documents we all agree are public.

I have two suggestions for providing broader public access. The first came by way of a reader of this blog, who pointed to the federal courts’ Pacer system as a model. In the federal system, you can go to the clerk’s office in a federal court to view documents. For online viewing, the Pacer system delivers documents digital form at ten cents per page, with a maximum of $3 per document. However, the user isn’t billed unless they incur charges of more than $30 per quarter. That would cover at least 300 pages of documents, certainly more than most individuals would likely need. The requirements of that type of billing system might pose a technical barrier for the smaller State Judiciary.

My second suggestion would be easier to implement. It would involve placing eCourt Kokua terminals in every public library through a cooperative agreement with the State Library System. Libraries have a number of subscription services which are offered to the public, including the New York Times, PressReader (to read newspapers from around the world), Overdrive access to magazines, and access to a large number of popular books in digital editions, so there’s certainly a lot of precedent for such an arrangement. The State Library System has 51 branches spread out across 6 islands, certainly more than the number of court facilities. Such a system would not have any impact on regular users of court records, such as law firms, news organizations, etc., because the cost of an eCourt Kokua subscription is nominal enough to be economical for them, while increasing general public access exponentially.

The only real question I can see is why a system like this wasn’t made available years go.