Law Profs Worry That Plan to Pulp Millions of Federal Court Files Will Destroy Historical Goldmine
In the digital age, there’s less of a need to keep paper records on hand, and federal officials are in the process of destroying millions of court files in an effort to cut storage costs.
But law professors and historians say seemingly mundane material can be a treasure trove of historical information that is forever lost when shredded, pounded to pulp and recycled, the Associated Press reports.
Among materials slated for destruction, according to the National Archives and Records Administration, are more than 10 million bankruptcy case files and several million more U.S. District Court district court files dating from 1970 to 1995.
Theodore Eisenberg, a Cornell Law School professor who clerked for the late Justice Earl Warren at the U.S. Supreme Court, predicts that “really important” information about historic trends that help determine appropriate policy will be lost as a result of the records destruction.
For example, it isn’t clear why the percentage of federal cases that go to trial dropped from about 12 percent in the 1960s to around 2 percent today, says law professor Christina Boyd of the University at Buffalo.
A possible explanation, she says, is that federal judges may have promoted settlements in the 1970s and 1980s to benefit corporations and other institutions being sued by individuals, the AP article reports.
“This was a crucial period in legal history,” Boyd said. “We need to understand the trends—and that means looking at files that could be going away.”
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