News media typically omit links to the lawsuits they're reporting on. The reasons range from the practical (they've been given early access by litigators) to cynical (they want readers to rely on their interpretation and presentation of the case) to plain laziness. We can't fix the press, but we can now find the lawsuits easier thanks to The Missing Link, a new Firefox addon that automatically fishes out that CourtListener link.
The Missing Link finds the U.S. court case discussed on the page you're reading — a news article, blog post, or opinion piece — and links you straight to it on CourtListener. … Works on appellate and Supreme Court opinions as well as district-court dockets. Some video-led or heavily script-rendered pages have no readable text to analyze; that's expected, not a malfunction..
There's a caveat: you need a paid-up account with Anthropic, as Claude does the work of deducing the lawsuit being discussed. News items rarely include the formal title or docket reference either, it turns out! The code is open-source and available on GitHub.
The Missing Link is the work of Rebecca Fordon, a law librarian and legal writing professor in Ohio.
Previously:
• Why can't Americans look up their own case-law for free?
• RECAP, a Firefox plugin that frees US caselaw one page at a time
• Federal courts resist transparency, but the Free Law Project fights back
