Hacker News Reader

In most European countries court rulings are quite hard to get a hold off.

Not they are not. They are public records in most. Luxembourg is one of the few exceptions.

They might not be available online but can be ordered from the court clerk (which is the case here in Finland for example) but the 2 largest EU countries (Germany and France) has them online for free.

Though as most European countries are not using a case law system the actual value of getting these is not that important for lawyers etc.

In Germany you do not get all the cases, just the ones the courts deem important enough. E.g. if the ruling is different from earlier ones in some aspect, if it is a higher court or if the case was of particular public interest.

Is this a them being lazy thing or a German privacy thing?

It's not just a German privacy thing. There is little reason for the vast majority of lawsuits to be public.

Oh that's just extremely not true. Open, non-secret courts are incredibly important for avoiding impropriety. Especially in a common law system, there's just no way that would work.

The only exception are family law cases.

> can be ordered from the court clerk

I would classify that as hard to get.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com