An initial disclaimer: I know most of the folks who post in this forum do criminal appellate work and will have very little interest in my query. But lack of interest has never stopped me from waxing interminably before, so here goes.

For the past two weeks, the Texas Supreme Court's website has carried the court's weekly orders, but I have been unable to access the court's opinions within those orders (no HTML or PDF version has been accessible on the site). Is the CCA's website demonstrating the same glitch?

The websites for many of the appellate courts have been experiencing various problems during the last few weeks.

The Office of Court Administration is working diligently to get everything back online and in working order. (The CCA's was down until Wednesday or Thursday of last week.)

First, if you notice specific problems with a court's website, I recommend you send the network administrator an e-mail about the specific problem.

Second, sometimes a court's opinions are not immediately posted online, even though the disposition of the case might otherwise be available. Though I can't explain the full reasoning behind the delay(s), it is my understanding that some delays are attributable to the need for OCA to covert the opinion document into HTML & PDF formatting before an opinion can be posted. Such a conversion process, of course, takes time.

Just my two cents. OCA has done a fairly good job getting their sites up, but their Java implementation is very buggy. About 1 time in 10, an OCA site will completely crash my system. I've never enountered another web page that does anything like that.

The concept is great, but I have also noticed problems. For example, when I registered I checked for e-mail alerts from all of the courts of appeals plus the Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals. However, I only receive the alerts from the two Houston courts, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Corpus Christi, and Eastland. Also, I almost always get a "no html document found" message when I click on a case opinion on the Waco court's site. The same is true for one of the East Texas courts (Tyler or Texarkana--can't remember which one).

Janette Ansolabehere

The Tyler Court (12th) usually takes the next day for opinions to be available, although they are often available on Westlaw. The Texarkana Court (6th) seems to be immediately available. I can almost always get the text of an opinion as soon as the disposition is posted. Frankly, and I know I should direct this to the otherwise wonderful people who run these sites, I do not understand why they are using Java. (I am not a programmer.) The moving type does not enhance my experience and I would gladly forgo whatever benefits are derived to have a less buggy site. I had an even older computer at home and there is nothing worse than blowing up your computer to check for late posting opinions. That said, every time I have tried the equivalent site in another state I have been thankful for our near-real time and historical access to the work of the Judiciary.

John, isn't netscape supposed to handle java better? Maybe you could try that?