This report provides an overview of the availability of information about court operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically court information on the federal courts’ public websites and how the information is presented to and accessed by website visitors. This overview also describes the differing approaches federal courts have taken for disseminating COVID-19 information on their websites and concludes with suggestions on how courts might enhance the accessibility of that information. 

This report evaluates the use of certified questions of state law between 2010 and 2018 in three U.S. circuit courts of appeal: the Ninth, Sixth, and Third Circuits. The data shows variation in the rate of certification and timing of certification events between the circuits.

This report on accessibility developed from a yearlong study of various entities of the federal judiciary, including the judiciary’s electronic case filing and processing systems, homepages of federal judiciary websites, and published Judicial Conference and Administrative Office policies on disability and access.

This study was undertaken as part of the author’s Science & Technology Policy Fellowship with the Federal Judicial Center through the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This report presents findings from surveys of attorneys participating in the Mandatory Initial Discovery Pilot (MIDP). The survey asks participating attorneys to evaluate the effects of the MIDP initial disclosures on pilot cases closed in the District of Arizona and the Northern District of Illinois through March 2019.