ARCP Legal Research Digest 1, Compilation of Airport Law Resources (January 2008) (“Digest 1”) provides a comprehensive listing of airport-related legal resources, including judicial decisions, government publication, scholarly journals and other periodicals.  The listing of judicial decisions is extensive and sorted by subject area.  The indexing of judicial decisions in this manner makes the Compilation a useful tool for airport management and airport lawyers.  However, people using the journal must still review an individual decision listed to determine the holding and its relevance to a particular legal issue that they face.  Airport lawyers and airport management would benefit if they had access to single source document that not only listed judicial decisions relating to a particular legal issue but that also provided a summary of relevant holdings and a link to the source document itself. 

            ACRP Research Digest 4, Compilation of DOT and FAA Airport Legal Determinations and Opinion Letters Through December 31, 2007 (2008) (“Digest 4”) provides an index similar to Digest 1, as well as summaries and links to source documents for DOT and FAA administrative decisions, determinations and legal opinions.  A similar compilation of judicial decisions (with summaries and links to source documents) would complement the information contained in Digest 4, by providing comparable information about adjudications that did not involve Federal administrative determinations and about subsequent judicial determinations on administrative decisions that were challenged in court. 

            The objective of this research project is to make these judicial decisions readily and inexpensively available to airport attorneys, the public and other researchers.  Ideally, the product of this research, if all phases are implemented, would be a web-based searchable database containing the full text of each document as well as a short summary of the outcome.  The database should allow searches by topic, court, and airport involved.The final research report should be a legal research digest similar in form, organization and content to Digest 4.  Where applicable, the summary should identify by case name the administrative decision being reviewed.  The summary should be in sufficient detail to serve as a research guide addressing all major holdings. 

Status: The CD Digest has been published as Legal Resarch Digest 13:  An Index and Digest of Decisions:  Compilation of Airport Law Resources.