How open are the courts as an institution? In many respects, the answer is that they are extraordinarily open. The public is almost always welcome to observe court proceedings. There have been a few exceptions in Rhode Island -- as when a judge refused to allow public access to jury selection (and was later overruled by the State Supreme Court) -- but generally, there is no question that court proceedings are subject to public scrutiny. The public can even observe trials in child molestation cases, where the full record is not available for public inspection.

Certain electronic data about court proceedings are also available to the public, making the courts far more accessible in this regard than most other parts of government. There are public terminals in the court clerks' office that allow members of the public to examine the status and outcome of civil and criminal cases going back more than a decade. Moreover, the court clerks are generally very helpful in providing access to the actual court files.

Against this general background of openness, we sought to examine three specific areas where the norms of accessibility might be at issue. The first area involves the expungement of criminal cases. Expungement is a method of sealing otherwise public documents in criminal courts. The expungement of criminal court records is relatively uncontroversial when applied to cases where criminal charges were dropped or where the defendant was not convicted at trial. It is more controversial, however, when records of conviction are removed from the public record. The question posed in this study is whether felony convictions are being expunged in contradiction to the terms of the statute. In other words, are cases being expunged which are not eligible under the law?

The two remaining areas of study involve civil cases. One component of this study concerns the sealing of civil records. We sought to determine how often records are sealed and how often it is possible to ascertain the basis for sealing. The final component concerns the settlement of claims against municipalities. The question we asked is whether the settlements of civil suits are generally available to the public as mandated by statute. Settlement information is not generally filed with the court, so this aspect of the study involved surveying city and town solicitors.

L. Arthi Krishnaswami for the design and production of the book.

We wish to acknowledge the assistance of Jessica Robertson in surveying the city and town solicitors. Thank you to Staci Sawyer for consultation and advice. Thank you to Kathleen Odean for excellent editorial suggestions.

Thanks to Jack Combs for his expert (and patient) computer assistance. We couldn’t do these reports without you.

We also wish to thank the clerks at the Providence Superior Court and at the Capital Records Center for their assistance over a period of months.

Thanks also to the Office of the Attorney General, particularly to Jim Martin of the Public Information Office, Deputy Attorney General Gerald Coyne and Alan Goulart, Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division for Providence.

This research was supported by the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University. Special thanks to Tom Anton and Darrell West.