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How to Run a Scan Quality Check:

  1. Find your case docket online (if you don't already have the web address): You can find civil state court cases in South Carolina online using the Case Records Search provided by the South Carolina Judicial Branch. Click on the "actions" tab, find the filing and click the icon on the right to open it in your browser. Firefox is recommended.
  2. Download the docket copy: Open your case on the court's public index and download the PDF for the filing you want to test. Do not modify it in any way.
  3. Copy the docket URL. Copy the address of the document link you downloaded from into the textbox below just under "Docket URL". The portal records it and verifies your upload against the public docket entry, so the report can tie your file to a specific, citable court record.
  4. Upload the PDF. Click "Choose File", select the downloaded filing, and click the "Analyze Uploaded pdf" button. The portal uploads it and uses cryptography to compute the file's SHA-256 fingerprint, reads its metadata, and measures every page image inside it. In many of McNeil and Poyer's filings, different scan settings were used for different pages in the same document. So the the analysis is per-page, not just per-document.
  5. Print your report. The result page opens at a private link that only you receive. Print it or save it as a PDF. The report lists every measurement alongside the method, so others can repeat the test on the same file and reach the same numbers.

1. Verify the public docket entry

Example: https://docviewer.charlestoncounty.gov/PublicIndex/Index?viewertype=cms&ctagency=10002&casenumber=2025CP1005095&docseq=P1A1

SC's Systemic Pro Se Obstacle Course

How structural architecture degrades justice before a case is ever heard.

Two-Tier Access

While SC licensed attorneys file electronically in seconds, in a system that's available essentially 24/7/365, self-represented litigants fight traffic, parking, and security gates to submit paper within the narrow window of court hours.

The Scanner as Barrier

Pro Se Plaintiffs McNeil and Poyer of McNeil v SAC 181, LLC et al found their filings have been frequently degraded by being scanned at a bitonal black-and-white setting originally intended for bandwidth-restricted fax machines.

The 1-Bit Absolute

A standard cell phone camera captures images in 24-bit true color (over 16 million colors). A clean grayscale scan uses 8-bit depth (256 distinct shades of gray). A 1-bit setting allows exactly two values per pixel: 0 (absolute black) or 1 (absolute white).

50th In Lawyers per Capita

SC has only 2.06 attorneys per 1,000 residents, about half the national average. A representation desert contributes to a high percentage of pro se litigants - by necessity. creating a massive queue facing systemic bias.

Legislative Judge Filter

Virginia is the only other state where legislature elects judges, and SC adds the filter of the largely lawyer-legislator controlled Judicial Merit Selection Committee (JMSC) as gatekeepers for judges some may try cases in front of.

Algorithmic Suppression

Court scanners flatten crawlable, copy-paste friendly vector text layers of pro se legal filings into flat images. This renders their legal arguments invisible to search engine and AI crawlers without resource-intensive, error-prone OCR ... silencing the voices of the vulnerable.

The Mirror Docket

A concept of a replicated public court docket, but with restored pro se filing quality, and amplified visibility of their arguments and evidence using STL-Schema powered pdf wrapper pages. Software overlays the clerk stamp from the "official" docket without touching the text layer. more.

The Federal Challenge

The systemic degradation of pro se evidence and silencing of their voices is a constitutional crisis. South Carolina's two-tiered e-filing ban and resulting scanner degradation are now the target of a Fourteenth Amendment challenge before the Supreme Court of the United States.

This tool reports measurements of the uploaded file and makes no legal conclusions.

Please submit only public court records, not sealed or confidential material.