Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has just put up on the web a breakthrough service that allows users to examine the official actions of individual federal district judges.

With the tool -- accessible on TRAC's subscription site, -- users can review the work of most judges who served from FY 1968 to FY 2001. Available information includes their workload, sentences and case disposition times. The service also allows the user to compare the work of one judge with the work of all the judges in that district or the nation as a whole and to generate annual case-by-case lists of matters disposed of by a particular judge.

Coverage includes criminal cases and civil matters where the government is a party and that were handled by assistant U.S. attorneys.

Although court proceedings are typically open, and court records can be examined about most specific cases and opinions are often published, this site provides a different view: systematic comparative information about how a judge has functioned in the overall handling of the court's business.

For this reason, TRAC's new service is expected to be of interest to federal judges, to defense attorneys, legal scholars, news organizations, public interest groups, law schools, Congress and others.

To explore the various kinds of information available on TRACFED go here. . You can sign up online or call for an annual subscription.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
trac@syr.edu