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:
“Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word.”
—Gail Hamilton (1833–1896)
“The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“Our medieval historians who prefer to rely as much as possible on official documents because the chronicles are unreliable, fall thereby into an occasionally dangerous error. The documents tell us little about the difference in tone which separates us from those times; they let us forget the fervent pathos of medieval life.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Betray, kind husband, Thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court Thy mild Dove,
Who is most true and pleasing to Thee then
When she is embraced and open to most men.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)