Computational Legal Studies™ » Google for Government

Julian Assange: Why the World Needs WikiLeaks [ TED 2010 ]

dmartink — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:59:48 +0000

Love it or hate it … WikiLeaks has been in the news quite a bit lately. In this TED talk, Founder Julian Assange sits down with Chris Anderson to discuss WikiLeaks. From the talk description … “The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who’s reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.”

The Google Prediction API [From Google Labs]

dmartink — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:01:25 +0000

Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources (02-08) [From Environmental Law Institute]

dmartink — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 04:55:32 +0000

Click above to access visual and for the Full Report entitled Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources: 2002-2008 click here! [HT: Barry Ritholtz @ The Big Picture]

Legal Studies in the Era of ‘Big Data’ – Google Releases 10 Terabytes of Patent and Trademark Data

dmartink — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:46:01 +0000

Computational Legal Studies Presentation Slides from the Law.gov Meetings

dmartink — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:55:19 +0000

Thanks to Carl Malamud and the good folks at the University of Colorado Law School and University of Texas Law School for allowing us to participate in their respective law.gov meetings. For those interested in governmental transparency, we believe that Carl Malamud’s on-going national conversation is very important. The video above represents a fixed spaced movie combining the majority of the slides we presented at the two meetings. If the video will not load, click here to access the YouTube Version of the Slides. Enjoy!

Law.Gov Meeting @ Texas Law School

dmartink — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:48:12 +0000

Tommorow is the Law.gov meeting at Texas Law School where Mike and I will be presenting in the afternoon session. We are looking forward to the discussion! Thanks to Terry Martin and Carl Malamud for organizing the event. For those interested, click on the image above and you will be directed to the agenda for the meeting.

The World Bank Data: Now Freely Available – Featuring New Interface, API, etc.

dmartink — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:25:27 +0000

World Bank’s Open Data Initiative from World Bank on Vimeo.

Many Bills – A Visual Bill Explorer [From IBM Research Labs]

dmartink — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:01:08 +0000

Law.Gov Meeting @ Colorado Law School

dmartink — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:09:54 +0000

Tomorow is the Law.gov meeting at Colorado Law School. I am looking forward to it. Thanks to Paul Ohm and Carl Malamud for organizing the event. I know that we will have a very meaningful discussion! For those interested, click on the image above and you will be directed to the agenda for the meeting.

United States Supreme Court’s New Website — Still Far Below the Mark

dmartink — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:13:38 +0000

The United States Supreme Court has recently launched its newly redesigned website. Given the significant limitations associated with the prior website, this launch had been highly anticipated. Indeed, many had hoped for a website that would reflect well upon the Court. While we applaud the decision to move away from the prior design, a review of the Court’s new website reveals a product which still falls far below the mark.

One of the very disappointing aspects of the new interface is that it appears to have been created with little regard for the overtures offered by folks such as the Sunlight Foundation. Specifically, in an effort to improve the experience of end users, the Sunlight Foundation offered a very constructive mockup redesign for the website. Unfortunately, the current redesign does not reflect most of their ideas.

For those interested in additional thoughts on this matter, the good folks over at Law Librarian Blog offer a number of constructive suggestions for improvements. These include unlocking PDF documents by simultaneously making their content available in friendly formats such as XML / HTML. Anyway, we hope that this is merely one step in the direction of genuine improvement …. but given the current state of affairs … the path to a 21st century website for the United States Supreme Court looks to be quite long.

160,000 Hours of C-Span Coverage at Your Finger Tips

dmartink — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:50:12 +0000

As reported in the NY Times … roughly 160,000 hours of C-SPAN coverage is going live for your consumption. Yet another example that the Era of Big Data is upon us!