The Washington Post is reporting this morning about a program started at Northwestern University a couple of years ago to put Supreme Court audio online.

The site, Oyez.org, has been running for the past few years, but the effort began in the early 1980's when a bunch of Chicago area Macintosh users and Cubbies fans decided to put together a Hypercard stack that served as a kind of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Supreme Court."

Oyez has been funded by a variety of sources over the years, including the National Science Foundation (as a part of the Digital Libraries Initiative- Phase 2), and has grown from a Hypercard stack to a legitimate online service.

Audio is available for download and storage in MP3 format and all of the data is covered by the Creative Commons license (their license information here).

Cool stuff available, for free, and in a timely fashion. Don't you just love the 'net?