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freelawproject / courtlistener

A fully-searchable and accessible archive of court data including growing repositories of opinions, oral arguments, judges, judicial financial records, and federal filings.
https://www.courtlistener.com
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Collect political donation information on judges from FEC #1288

Open mlissner opened 4 years ago

mlissner commented 4 years ago

One of our clients is interested in this data, and it'll be a boon to journalists to have it too. Do a deep dive to see how feasible it is, then the various pieces will probably be:

  1. data model upgrades
  2. scraping script
  3. UI tweaks
  4. API tweaks (probably)
ghost commented 4 years ago

Is this data for state judges and not federal? It looks like federal judges are highly discouraged from making campaign donations based on the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges:

Canon 5: A Judge Should Refrain from Political Activity

(A) General Prohibitions. A judge should not:

(1) act as a leader or hold any office in a political organization;

(2) make speeches for a political organization or candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office; or

(3) solicit funds for, pay an assessment to, or make a contribution to a political organization or candidate, or attend or purchase a ticket for a dinner or other event sponsored by a political organization or candidate.

(B) Resignation upon Candidacy. A judge should resign the judicial office if the judge becomes a candidate in a primary or general election for any office.

(C) Other Political Activity. A judge should not engage in any other political activity. This provision does not prevent a judge from engaging in activities described in Canon 4.

COMMENTARY

The term “political organization” refers to a political party, a group affiliated with a political party or candidate for public office, or an entity whose principal purpose is to advocate for or against political candidates or parties in connection with elections for public office.

mlissner commented 4 years ago

I guess that's not a surprise. This is about federal judges, so let me see if we still want to pursue this with the above in mind.

mlissner commented 4 years ago

Right, so judges may have made donations prior to becoming judges. We want to collect that. This project is ON.

ghost commented 4 years ago

Attaching a possible schema. There are still some questions in here to discuss.

db-schema.xlsx