Alaska’s court system is improving public access, but one more step would help

It’s nearly impossible to keep track of civil filings in state courts without a good automatic notification system, and that’s missing in Alaska

The Dimond Courthouse building, home to the Juneau offices of the Alaska Department of Law, is seen across the street from the Alaska State Capitol on Friday, May 27, 2022. (Lisa Phu/Alaska Beacon)

By James Brooks

Alaska Beacon

Reporter James Brooks regularly requests public information under the Freedom of Information Act and uses public documents, including those available through Alaska’s Court system, to do his job. As we observe Sunshine Week, an annual event that highlights the importance of open records and transparency in government, he shares a few thoughts.

This month, the state of Alaska filed lawsuits against six national crowdfunding websites, accusing them of illegally using the identities of Alaska charities and illegally raising money on their behalf.

These are big cases with major national implications.

They’re also going to be difficult to follow.

The Alaska Court System does an excellent job of listing new cases — it publishes lists of new civil and criminal cases daily — but when it comes to automatically notifying people about ongoing civil proceedings, there’s room for improvement. 

There’s no way to be automatically notified when there are updates to civil cases, such as when someone files a motion, makes a written argument or schedules oral arguments.

That might seem like a niche problem, but it’s one that has implications across the state. 

An individual Alaskan might be able to keep track of a case they care about by checking Courtview on a daily or weekly basis, but that process is physically impossible for a reporter who might want to follow dozens or hundreds at a time. 

If a reporter doesn’t know about something, they can’t report on it. While court rules set specific timelines for some filings, it’s impossible to predict the unexpected, and a reporter can’t ask for a file if they don’t know it exists. 

While PACER, the federal court system’s online portal, is an unaffordable mess that charges 10 cents per page, it at least is capable of automatic notices that instantly alert reporters of newsworthy developments.

In a perfect world, there would be enough reporters to make regular checks on all cases of interest. We don’t live in that perfect world.

Alaskans filed 2,569 civil cases in Alaska superior courts during the last fiscal year. There were more than 7,500 civil cases in district courts during the same period.

The Alaska court system has a useful system, TrueFile, for following criminal cases. There isn’t a similar system for civil cases, and there’s a reason for that: Civil courts deal with things like divorces and similar actions that are normally kept confidential. 

Alaska has a constitutional right to privacy, after all. 

But what about issues of public concern? Without a notification system, it’s impossible to stay abreast of what’s happening. 

We know the court system is working on this problem — at the Beacon, we’ve certainly pestered them enough — but because it’s Sunshine Week, we thought we should shed a little light on a problem we’ve been dealing with for a long time. 

The court system has been doing a good job of improving access. When we asked for a list of newly filed cases, they added it to their website. 

At courthouses, there are now public terminals where reporters and members of the public can examine documents immediately, in any case, without cost. That lets us easily keep an eye on things across the state.

But for all those improvements, there’s still room for things to be better.

The lack of automatic notification is a problem for accused and accuser alike. If a business is accused of violating Alaska’s law requiring good faith and fair dealing, it’s easy for a reporter to know about and report on the accusation.

But under the current system, it’s much harder to know if that accusation is dismissed or withdrawn, which makes it less likely to be reported upon.

Reporters can ask the court to add a case to a list of most requested case files, but it’s a manual process that requires a lot of work by court staff. 

The court system’s goal is to provide equal access to justice, but we note that equal access isn’t possible without information.

If the court system is reluctant to create an automatic notification system because of privacy concerns, an alternative would be to allow reporters and members of the public to ask to be added to existing email distribution lists for individual cases.

Judges might be reluctant to do this, so instead of asking for voluntary compliance, it would be better to enact a court rule change and require them to comply. 

Attorneys involved in cases are already notified automatically by email about filings in cases that they are involved in. 

If members of the public and reporters can be added to those distribution lists, it would fix the issue and lead to better reporting.

That’s in the interest of all Alaskans, not just those of us here at the Beacon.

• James Brooks Cascade is a longtime Alaska reporter who lives in Juneau. He previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.