Seventh Circuit launches wiki

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One fairly high-profile “early adopter” is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Last May in Milwaukee at the annual judicial conference, Judge Frank Easterbrook announced the posting of the “Ca7 Wiki” at www.ca7.us courts.gov/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

Easterbrook told Wisconsin Law Journal that the idea for a Seventh Circuit Wiki came from Cass Sunstein’s book, “Infotopia.”

“I had long known about and used Wikipedia. But Professor Sunstein’s observation that many corporations have created their own specialized wikis, and that these had been useful in gathering strands of information that are scattered among many people, sparked my interest.

What other people do, the judiciary can try as well. So the experiment has been launched, and we will see what happens.”

The starting point for the court’s wiki is the practitioner’s handbook, which has been available in a hard copy for decades now, and online for many years as well, says Circuit Executive Collins T. Fitzpatrick. The big difference with the wiki format is that readers can post comments.

As of press time, few had been posted, he says, reasoning that that’s because the wiki is so new, plus the fact that the court’s procedures do not change very often.