Vanishing Links in Judicial Opinions

We've all encountered a "dead" link when we're browsing web documents. What happens when the dead link is cited as part of a judicial opinion? This is the issue studied by Tina Ching in her survey of Washington State Supreme Court and Appellate Court opinions issued from 1999-2005. A total of 64% of the URL's cited failed to link to the referenced document. Links to government publications were the most frequently cited references in these opinions.