On February 1, 2013, the NYS Court of Appeals will launch an online service they developed,  the Court of Appeals Public Access and Search System, aka Court-PASS.   Court-PASS provides an improved method for the filing of records and briefs in digital format on appeals to the Court of Appeals and, for the first time, offers universal online access to these documents through a publicly-searchable database on the Court’s website.

Users of this database may view a list of all pending and decided cases listed alphabetically by case name.  In addition, the search function allows users to retrieve pending and decided cases by party name, argument date, decision date, Judge, appeal number, subject matter or a combination of any of the above.

The public will be able to use Court-PASS free of charge to view or download documents from every stage of a case at the Court of Appeals.

Court-PASS  will be maintained as a permanent public archive for documents related to Court of Appeals cases pending on or filed after January 1, 2013.

The Notice to the Bar as well as changes to the Court’s Rules, and revised Technical Specifications are available here.