How NICO faculty and collaborators are progressing to make the U.S. judicial system more accessible, user friendly and equitable

May 1, 2021By NICO

In October 2019, with the help of NSF funding, the Systemic Content Analysis of Litigation Events Open Knowledge Network (SCALES-OKN) was launched with Luis Amaral and Adam Pah as Co-PIs. It has since grown to an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional group of more than 20 members spanning Northwestern (McCormick School of Engineering, Pritzker School of Law, Medill School of Journalism and the Kellogg School of Management) and 7 other universities across the country.

Significant progress has already been made in their goal to “tear down” the judicial paywall and develop a suite of tools to enable equitable access to court records and analysis. Some highlights to date:

Faculty authored a policy recommendation article in Science “How to Build a More Open Justice System” - July 2020
Citing the Science paper, the House of Representatives passed the Open Courts Act.
SCALES was awarded an NSF Phase II Convergence Accelerator Grant - Sept 2020
Launch of first public repository, PACER-tools, accessible on Github - December 2020

For further background on SCALES-OKN watch this video:

If you are interested in joining the SCALES team, they are looking for people and organizations who want to help shape this new platform. Please visit the SCALES web site for more information.