In February 2019, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court invited comments on drafts of a Digital Court Records Access Rules and related amendments to the Maine Rules of Unified Criminal Procedure and the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure, including the Family Division rules. The proposed new rules and amendments, as well as links to the materials from the Transparency and Privacy Task Force, draft legislation, and comments to the first draft of legislation were available on the Maine Judicial Branch’s website, but the link (www.courts.maine.gov/quick/dcra) is no longer working.
The information is available on the Judicial Branch’s website at
https://www.courts.maine.gov/rules_adminorders/rules/proposed/access_to_records_2019-02-27/index.shtml or through the links below.
A copy of the notice can be found here–
Draft Digital Court Records Access Rules can be found here–
Draft Amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure can be found here–
Draft Amendments to the Rules of Criminal Procedure can be found here–
Draft Amendments to Maine’s Family Division Rules can be found here–
CHIEF JUSTICE GIVES 2019 STATE OF JUDICIARY ADDRESS TO LEGISLATURE (February 26, 2019)
A major topic of this year’s address was the Judiciary’s move from paper to electronic court record management. Chief Justice Saufley provided an update on the effort to digitize Maine court records. In June, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that digital records would be available to the public for a fee. The Chief Justice indicated that there would soon be proposed legislation and rules about which records will be accessible to the public through the e-system. She described this project as “one of the most complex projects [she] has has ever been involved with in Government.”
See a discussion of her address from the Portland Press Herald article Maine’s chief justice asks for more support, but not for the judicial branch dated 02/27/2019 (updated 11/9/19):
or Bangor Daily News article Maine’s chief justice doesn’t want money to fight opioid crisis to go to the courts dated 02/26/2019:
Read the full address here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1il48UIVPLv3NLVJkgMQA0cyMmfciQTw9/view?usp=sharing