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
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“In the course of writing one historical book or another, it has happened that I could hardly restrain myself from simply copying entire documents. Indeed, I sometimes sank down among the documents and said to myself, I can’t improve on these.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
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