Texas Supreme Court opinions missing

[anseljh]

The Texas Supreme Court's clerk tweeted that he thought it'd be cool if SCOTUS online dockets linked back to lower court online dockets. He included a URL to one SCOTUS docket, which had a docket number for a Texas Supreme Court case, Pidgeon (15-0688).

• Tweet: https://twitter.com/blakeahawthorne/status/930817357030752257
• Supreme Court docket: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/17-424.html
• SCOTX opinion: http://www.txcourts.gov/media/1438061/150688.pdf

I wanted to see if we could match the SCOTUS docket back to the SCOTX opinion on CourtListener using just the court and docket number. However, CourtListener does not have this SCOTX opinion! It was filed June 30, 2017. In fact, we don't have seem to have any SCOTX opinions from June 30 to July 5, 2017: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=&type=o&order_by=dateFiled+desc&filed_after=2017-06-10&filed_before=2017-07-05&court=tex. However, the Pidgeon case does appear on SCOTX's weekly opinion page for June 30, 2017 (http://www.txcourts.gov/supreme/orders-opinions/2017/june/june-30-2017/).

We seem to be missing other recent SCOTX opinions as well.

• SCOTX's November 10, 2017 weekly opinion page: http://www.txcourts.gov/supreme/orders-opinions/2017/november/november-10-2017/
• CourtListener results for SCOTX opinions between Nov 9 and Nov 11 (none): https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=&type=o&order_by=dateFiled+desc&filed_after=2017-11-09&filed_before=2017-11-11&court=tex

I looked briefly at the Texas courts scraper, and it seems to be using a search form. However, there are also a weekly opinion pages, available here: http://www.txcourts.gov/supreme/orders-opinions/. I confirmed that you can indeed find the Pidgeon opinion through the form.

I did not check to see if other Texas courts' opinions are also missing.

[anseljh]

Thanks to @arderyp for investigating and suggesting a fix.

The Pidgeon opinion is now available: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4444060/jack-pidgeon-and-larry-hicks-v-mayor-sylvester-turner-and-city-of-houston/?q=pidgeon&type=o&order_by=score+desc&stat_Precedential=on&court=tex

I think we can close this out once we verify it's working going forward, and that we got all the missing opinions.

[mlissner]

Looks like the back scrape I did worked OK. Don't know about going forward. I'm a bit worried how this happened in the first place.

[brianwc]

Well, we know the clerk, so could ask if the weekly report is the best/canonical source or whether both approaches should work to get everything.

On Nov 17, 2017 11:08 AM, "Mike Lissner" [email protected] wrote:

Looks like the back scrape I did worked OK. Don't know about going forward. I'm a bit worried how this happened in the first place.

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