Ernest Miller James Grimmelmann at Lawmeme has written up a two-part tutorial to help geeks understand the US legal system, using Lawrence Lessig's brief in the upcoming Eldred hearing. This is great stuff.
Cover Page: #!usr/bin/legal
Not unlike a fax cover sheet, the first page of a legal document typically contains only metadata, and the Eldred brief is no exception. There's a lot packed in here, so let's take it line by line.
No. 01-618: Those numbers at the top of the page are a docket number. Think of a docket number as the unique ID assigned by a court to each case it hears. Every document filed in a given case has the same docket number at the top. Since the enormous administrative apparatus of our legal system evolved long before modern database software, keeping track of thousands of cases required some clever filing techniques. Docket numbers are part of the solution.
(Part 2)
(Thanks, Ernest!)
