Greg Munno is a research professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. “The strength of the courts of law has ever been the greatest security which can be offered to personal independence.” – Alexis De Tocqueville The courts are perhaps the least understood, studied and transparent branch of the federal government. Article III judges receive lifetime appointments and are not subject to elections or the Freedom of Information Act. Electronic access to court documents, unlike the Congressional Record, costs money. Here at TRAC (the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a joint program of the Whitman and Newhouse Schools at Syracuse University) we’ve long wanted to build data tools that provided insight into how the judiciary works. TRAC has been building such tools for 25 years, relying on extensive knowledge of the Freedom of Information Act, database construction and data mining to provide unique insights into the practices of federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.