LeFile.Com Finds U.S. Supreme Court Web Site Out of Date

For Immediate Release

Contact: William Dupuy
dupuy@lefile.com

MARCH 12, 2001 -- Despite press reports and comments from witnesses to the contrary, the web site of the U.S. Supreme Court would have the visitor believe the most recent speech given by a Supreme Court Justice was six months ago.

Public records indicate that is not true, however, says William Dupuy, editor of LeFile.Com ( http://lefile.com ) the online journal of web site usability management.

LeFile reports that in the first weeks of 2001, some of the Justices made a number of speeches, some of them bearing on the presidential election. "It was the election hearings, after all, that moved the court from its behind-closed-doors posture to the audio-on-demand stage of news immediacy," Dupuy said in commentary on the LeFile site. "Having opened that door, the court put itself in the position of having to keep it open or risk some level of question about possible selective disclosure of its semi-public statements."

In addition to a public address in January by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Justice Anthony Scalia gave several talks -- one at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, and another in a debate with the American Civil Liberties Union in Hawaii.

LeFile's report raises the question why these speeches were not posted on the court's web site.

"Perhaps," says Editor Dupuy, "they were not as important as the speeches in the existing archive. They surely defined no substantive landmarks, according to a readng of the press reports. Yet, the page of listings on the Supreme Court's web site does not define the archived speeches in any particular way. They are speeches delivered to such bodies as law schools, the same forums addressed by the justices in January."

He continued, "As managers of their own enterprise, the Justices may be teaching an unfortunate lesson to the managements of other organizations. That message is, once the commitment is made to post information in the public domain, the commitment must be kept. Otherwise, the visitor is left with the appearance of a lazy organization or one with other agenda to manage."

The full article is available at
http://lefile.com/articles/briefs/supreme-speeches.htm