The Oyez Project is an unofficial online multimedia archive website for the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

. It was initiated by the

Illinois Institute of Technology The Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Illinois Tech and IIT, is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the m ...

Chicago-Kent College of Law The Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of the Illinois Institute of Technology, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the second oldest law school in the state of Illinois (after Northwestern Law). Chicago-Kent wa ...

and now also sponsored by

Cornell Law School Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private university, private, Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. One of the five Ivy League law schools, Cornell Law School offers four degree programs (Juris Doctor, JD, Maste ...

Legal Information Institute The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a non-profit public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and Tom Bruce, LII ...

and

Justia Justia is an American website specializing in legal information retrieval. It was founded in 2003 by Tim Stanley, formerly of FindLaw, and is one of the largest online databases of legal cases. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, Cal ...

. The website has emphasis on the court's audio of oral arguments. The website "aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since ../nowiki> October 1955."About Oyez
Oyez.org The website also includes biographical information of both incumbent and historical

justices ''Justice'' (abbreviation: ame ''J.'' and other variations) is an honorific style and title traditionally used to describe a jurist who is currently serving or has served on a supreme court or some equal position. In some countries, a justice ma ...

of the Court and advocates who have argued before the court. The project's name refers to the interjection, "

Oyez Oyez (, , ; more rarely with the word stress at the beginning) is a traditional interjection said two or three times in succession to introduce the opening of a court of law. The interjection was also traditionally used by town criers to attract ...

", that is spoken by the Supreme Court Marshal at the beginning of each argument session. The website was founded by Jerry Goldman, a research professor of law at the

History

The Oyez Project was conceived in Chicago in the late 1980's by Jerry Goldman, a professor of political science, and initially implemented using Apple's

HyperCard HyperCard is a application software, software application and software development kit, development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard com ...

software. Subsequent support from the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

and

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

allowed the project to evolve and establish a presence on the internet.

Government and private support

According to the website, the Oyez Project received technological support from

and grants from

. The project is also supported by various academic institutions such as Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the legal

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

FindLaw FindLaw is a business of Internet Brands that provides online legal information in the form of state laws, case law and codes, legal blogs and articles, a lawyer directory, DIY legal services and products, and other legal resources. The compa ...

, and the law firm

Mayer Brown Mayer Brown is a global white-shoe law firm, founded in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It has offices in 27 cities throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, with its largest offices being in Chicago, Washington, D.C., New ...

, among others. Jerry Goldman put the Oyez Project up for sale in 2016. He estimated it is "worth well over $1 million", but he hopes the buyer will not put the project behind a paywall. Harvard Law School offered to pay the project's operating costs, but not Goldman's price. In July 2016, the

and

joined IIT as sponsors.

Recognition

Oyez.org is listed by the Supreme Court as an authentic, although unofficial, online source to access the court's information. Oyez.org was featured as "Website of the Week" by international broadcaster

Voice of America Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is an international broadcasting network funded by the federal government of the United States that by law has editorial independence from the government. It is the largest and oldest of the American internation ...

in January 2006. The old version of the Oyez database was awarded the Silver Gavel Award for New Media by

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...

in 1998. Its founder, Jerry Goldman, was given a medal award in 1997 by

EDUCAUSE Educause is a nonprofit association in the United States whose mission is "to advance higher education through the use of information technology". Membership is open to institutions of higher education, corporations serving the higher education in ...

.educause.edu
, EDUCAUSE Medal Awards

References

External links

* {{Cornell American legal websites Illinois Institute of Technology Supreme Court of the United States

History

Government and private support

Recognition

See also

References

Further reading

External links