The purpose of this blog entry is to inform readers (some of whom may already know some of the items) of certain matters relating to Tax Court practice.
1. Documents available Online in the DAWSON System. First,
there is no permanent link for opinions. Those wanting opinions or orders have
to do so in the following alternative manners:
a. the “Today’s Opinions” or “Today’s Orders” pages, here and here, respectively which are available only on day of publication);
b. through the Docket Entries for the specific Case, here.
c. through the Opinion Search here or Order Search here. In addition to specific opinion searches, the Opinion Search offers significant database search possibilities by types of opinions (T.C., Memorandum, Summary, and Bench), by Tax Court Judge, and by dates (this latter permitting a search for cases that are no longer on the Today’s Opinions discussed in paragraph 1.a.)
I am not sure precisely why there are no permanent links provided for opinions, although I understand it relates to the design of the DAWSON system.
As to search by Judge with no other limiting parameters, the pages display only “first 100 matches;” in theory, this might limit the usefulness for certain types of studies. But within those parameters, certain analyses may be made. For example, having too much time on my hand, I wanted to see how productive the Active Judges were in terms of their T.C. and Memorandum Opinions. I started with a prolific generator of opinions, Judge Lauber who, although a Senior Judge since January 1, 2020, produced 100 T.C. and Memorandum Opinions from 7/26/21 (the earliest date that the search reached the maximum 100 opinions for Judge Lauber) to present (5/9/24). I then used the tool to determine the number of opinions rendered by the presently active Judges during the same period. Here are the results:
Those are the raw data; I draw no conclusions from these data because I am sure there is a lot of nuance behind them.
