How long are the documents of courts stored in the contries of the West? Can anybody enlighten me about how long the documents of a judicial trial are stored in the court (or in archives) and are available for studying in the countries of the West, say in France, in Britain, in Germany, in USA? I am asking because in Russia, where I live, people face problems in getting acquaintance with the documents of the court after certain period: all the documents, but the verdict of the judge, are annihilated in several years. I am curious how this problem is resolved in the West.
I'm not sure if you are asking for each of the countries listed, but I am assuming that they are there merely for example. In the US, the are a variety of different rules for its different court systems. As a rule, each State can make its own rules for its court system, and the overarching Federal system has its own rules as well, although they run off of the same principles. As such, the answer varies on which state the court is located in and possibly the type of document. In California, for example, different documents have different retention times for different documents. For example, documents for civil cases default to 10 years of retention, while adoption paperwork is retained permanently. For a criminal matter, the judgement (the final product that says if the accused is found guilty or innocent, and for what crimes) is retained permanently, while all other documents are retained for the greater of 50 years or the maximum length of sentence imposed. When the retention period for a document is over, the document is not automatically destroyed(at least in California). Instead, the appropriate official sends an official notice to all the parties in the case that the document is to be destroyed, and if no response is received to transfer the documents, the documents can be destroyed. (Source:http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&amp;sectionNum=68152) Note: I have said "document" throughout, which originally meant a piece of paper. However, recently, documents have been submitted electronically, and sometimes older documents are electronically scanned.
Details depend on the juristiction. For that, consult a lawyer if you plan to publish your app anywhere. But generally, even simple texts from exercises can be covered by copyright. Compare song lyrics, which are not much longer (and might not involve more creative thought than a good exercise ...). For vocabulary lists, it gets more tricky, but those can be covered as well if the assembly of the list was a creative effort. So if you simply list the 1,000 most common worlds in English and their translation, you are possibly fine, but if the words are divided into units and lessons, that's creative work.
If you are charged under the laws of Estonia (or Australia or Thailand or the UK) then the laws of the USA have no relevance whatsoever. It makes no difference if you are a US citizen, if the alleged crime happened in the USA or was perpetrated against the USA. If nation X has jurisdiction then you are tried under the laws of nation X. That is what sovereignty means. As to your specific example, Facebook does business in Estonia, therefore they are subject to Estonian law, as a US corporation they are also subject to US law and the law of every other jurisdiction they operate in (see why they need big legal departments?). If a legitimate Estonian warrant was served on them to disclose metadata or anything else then they are legally obliged to do so or be in contempt of court. Oh, and by the way, the first amendment right to free speech does not give you a right to anonymous free speech.
Was the case Sealed? Or is it considered to be Private? Those are two different cases. I was not able to find any laws regarding sealing, or expunging records of Name Changes, but was able to find the Utah Law for Criminal Records. I can only assume they draw from one another. All that being said, assuming your whatever case is sealed, then Some records are sealed. In these kinds of cases, even information about the existence of the case is not publicly available. A person seeking access to a sealed record must petition the court for permission to unseal the records. Rule 4-202.03 states that, ....no one may access a sealed court record except by order of the court. A judge may review a sealed record when the circumstances warrant. From that I can assume that, The records are not public. The records will not show up in a routine check The records will be known only if a there is a court order. Comparing it with the Expungement Act, Continued Use of Sealed Records After sealing, BCI continues to index and maintain all expunged records of arrests and convictions, but the records will not be released to the public. BCI will not divulge any information contained in the expunged records to any person or agency without a court order, unless authorized by statute to do so. Upon request, the following organizations may receive information contained in expunged records: the Board of Pardons and Parole Peace Officer Standards and Training federal authorities, unless prohibited by federal law the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing and the State Office of Education Both cases above require a court order to get that seal record information. However, from what I gather only expunged criminal records can be access upon request by the Division of Occupational Licences. Bottom line, it sounds like you are safe to mark is no previous name, but you may lose your license in the future if something goes south. I will recommend you to get a professional look into the word of the law and provide you with a written statement of the actual law. Another thing you can try is write to the court who sealed your case, present them the situation and explain what you have found so far, and ask for guidance.
While this isn't a simple and direct answer, it should point you in the right direction. There are countries which like the United States have parallel national and subnational court system, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland. Different rules of procedure for different courts within a larger overall court system for a federal jurisdiction are not that unusual even in nominally unitary court systems. But, the division between them is on something of a continuum with fine shades of differences between them. Only a few are as close to the extreme of power sharing and a &quot;federalist&quot; approach as the United States, however. Also even unitary court systems (in a geographic and federalism sense) often have parallel court systems on subject matter grounds. For example, France has both ordinary civil courts and labor courts whose rulings could overlap, and England historically had courts of law and courts of equity with a complex relationship to each other (and also ecclesiastical courts with jurisdiction of matters now vested in the civil courts of law like inheritance of tangible personal property). Similarly, Northern Ireland has or has had what amount to different parallel legal systems for terrorism and non-terrorism criminal offense. Most countries also have parallel criminal and quasi-criminal legal systems for civilians and soldiers respectively. I've seen this tension between the two systems as a plot point in contemporary English police procedural dramas, for example. On the other hand, systems with a more unitary legal system rarely are so fierce in their defense of protections against double jeopardy as the United States, and the dual sovereignty doctrine in U.S. double jeopardy law can be seen as a safety valve in practice and as applied in cases where the double jeopardy rule as interpreted under the U.S. Constitution is too strong a bar to legitimate second prosecutions. A comparative analysis of double jeopardy concepts can be found here. It is tricky to reduce the subtly differences between the rules in different countries to a clear yes or no kind of answer. A square answer to your question requires detailed examination of a dozen or more court systems that someone felt the need to write a book about to explain. If I can find a more specific answer I will update this one.
Short answer: No. If a court destroys the criminal file due to age, the defendant's criminal record lives on in law enforcement databases, be it local, state, or federal. In San Diego, the Superior Court records are open to inspection. Court case files are public records and subject to public inspection. California Rules of Court, rule 2.400(a) states that all papers in the court files may be inspected by the public in the office of the clerk. Rule 2.550(a) says that unless confidential or sealed by law, all court records are presumed open. However, again, this does not impact a criminal history report retained by law enforcement. To get the conviction literally removed from the criminal history report, the defendant will typically need a court order directing the law enforcement agency to remove the arrest and/or conviction. For example, in California, if the defendant can prove there was no reason to have arrested the defendant in the first place. Specifically, Penal Code section 851.8 (b) requires “any law enforcement agency” to destroy their records. “[Penal Code] section 851.8 is for the benefit of those defendants who have not committed a crime. It permits those petitioners who can show that the state should never have subjected them to the compulsion of the criminal law -- because no objective factors justified official action -- to purge the official records of any reference to such action. . . ...” (People v. Matthews (1992) 7 Cal.App.4th 1052, 1056.) (Emphasis added) In People v. Scott M. (1985) 167 Cal. App. 3d 688, 700 [“Section 851.8 is for the benefit of those defendants who have not committed a crime.”].) Factual innocence may be determined based on circumstances at the time of arrest or any meritorious defense. Recent case law establishes the pivotal time for viewing the evidence is when the motion is heard. The statutory language “necessarily means that the existence of reasonable cause depends on the current evidence rather than simply the evidence that existed at the time that the arrest and prosecution occurred.” (People v. Laiwala, 143 Cal. App. 4th 1065, 1068 &amp; n. 3 (2003) (emphasis added). Keep in mind in California, &quot;expunge&quot; does not mean to seal or destroy, but officially dismisses the conviction - leaving the public record intact. The best place to start is contacting your local public defender and ask about post conviction relief or record sealing if your arrest did not result in a conviction. Getting free advice never hurts.
The US has jurisdiction because the systems that the accused allegedly attacked are in the US. To use an example with older technology, you can't escape criminal liability for defrauding someone in one country simply because you did so through the mail or by telephone from another country. The UK and the US have an extradition treaty. The UK might refuse to extradite the accused; in that case the US would most likely complain loudly. If too many extradition requests are refused on one side, the other side might start limiting cooperation in any of several areas.
The U.S. has no such website, at least at either the federal or the state level. It is possible that some local courts allow their records to be searched on that basis although I am not aware of any that do so. Probably the closest database to that in the U.S. accessible to the public is the non-governmental non-profit organization operated Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse for federal criminal justice records (and other federal government records). It has lots of data on federal government matters from a variety of sources but isn't quite as comprehensive or as easy to use as the website described in the question. The problem with that is that the federal courts handle only a small percentage of the criminal cases in the United States, and it is a highly skewed mix of cases (e.g. with lots of immigration cases but few ordinary &quot;blue collar crime&quot; cases outside Indian Reservations and federal parks). The information necessary to build such a website is largely a matter of public record, but no one has taken on the task of making such a website. In part, this is because the task is so daunting. While the federal courts have a comprehensive electronic database called PACER, each state has at least one separate court case data base system, and many states have trial court case databases only at the county level and not at the state level, or have different databases for different kinds of courts. Even in states that do have statewide databases, there are often some courts that aren't included. For example, Colorado's state courts are part of a single statewide database, but its municipal courts each have their own separate court by court databases. Some rural areas in the U.S. still keep trial court records in paper form only. The data has been gathered from time to time of important subsets of this kind of data, but it isn't publicly available. For example, a media consortia in Florida gathered information to examine the consistency of sentencing and the extent of racial discrimination in sentencing in Florida, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the United States gathers such information selectively to make sentencing decisions. Neither of those compilations, however, including making the raw data available to the public. Similarly, there is a separate private academic database that tracks case level state general jurisdiction trial court data in 75 of the largest urban counties in the United States (including state law felony cases). But, that database is only available to members of the academic consortium that maintains it (basically, professors at affiliated universities and other professors granted privileges to use it from consortium member professors). The Westlaw division of its parent company, and Lexis-Nexus collect some trial court level data on U.S. courts, state and federal, on a non-comprehensive, basically opportunistic basis, but don't have complete data from any jurisdiction (although Westlaw's federal data basis has a pretty significant share of reasoned federal trial court orders). Both of these services require paid subscriptions. In contrast, comprehensive databases of precedent making appellate court decisions at the state and federal level are widely available on both a commercial basis (with better search tools, headnote analysis, and correlations of the data like records of cases citing other cases and statutes), and on a non-commercial basis (with just the bare bones text of the cases). This is because this information is necessary to almost every lawyer and judge to practice law on a day to day basis.