Exploring court records in the Washington State Archives

Exploring court records in the Washington State Archives

July 16, 2018

Not Judge Judy’s court? Then which court is it? Since there are many uses for court records, a large number of Archives users come in to access them for genealogical study, book research, school lesson planning, legal exploration, and still more purposes.

Finding court records can be a daunting task. Knowing the jurisdiction in which a case was heard is the most important information. The next information a person needs is the cause, case, or file number in hand. Cases are not always listed by name, but instead by number. Without the most primary information, one can expect to spend more time trying to locate your case. Most courts require a nominal hourly fee to look up cases if the number is unknown, then charge an additional fee for copies. Some cases are sealed because they involve juveniles, or healthcare confidentiality pursuant to state or federal laws currently in effect. See individual laws, such as the section of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) involving juvenile offender records, for clarification. Federally, one such law is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which protects health data privacy and security.

Courts records/files held at the Washington State Archives include supreme, superior, district, criminal, domestic, juvenile, and probate files. What is available for each level varies, depending dependent on what records a courts has transferred to the archives. Some historical records can still reside with the original court in which they were created. Typically the originating court will at the very least have a microfilm copy of its records, unless there has been record loss due to a natural disaster. Earlier court records can be found in bound volumes or loose pages. The files can contain a couple of pages or a few hundred pages. The pictures accompanying this post show

examples of some of the indexes.

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