Subpoena Duces Tecum - Public Access To Documents Filed With The Court

Public Access To Documents Filed With The Court

The right of the public to access judicial records is fundamental to a democratic state and is analogous to the First Amendment right of freedom of speech and of the press and the Sixth Amendment right to public trials. While the right to access trial records is not absolute, it is framed in presumption of public access to the proceedings and records. United States Code 11, Section 107 (a), of the federal bankruptcy law, is a codification of the common-law general right to inspect judicial records and documents. However, the right is not absolute and may be denied when the entity seeking to view the records has an improper purpose. The general intent of the statute is to favor public access to court documents.

Read more about this topic:  Subpoena Duces Tecum

Famous quotes containing the words public, access, documents and/or court:

    It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.
    Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)

    The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    At court I met it, in clothes brave enough
    To be a courtier, and looks grave enough
    To seem a statesman.
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)