CourtListener — Free Law Project

1. Summary

CourtListener (Free Law Project) aggregates court opinions, dockets, oral arguments, and judge data. Covers ~10M federal and state court opinions back to colonial America, plus PACER docket data from RECAP submissions.

2. Access Methods

REST API v4: https://www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/
Auth: Anonymous reads allowed on most endpoints; token raises rate limits and unlocks bulk export
Rate limit: ~5,000 req/hour unauthenticated for search; higher with token

Set COURTLISTENER_TOKEN env var. Get a free token at https://www.courtlistener.com/sign-in/ then create an API key.

3. Data Schema

Key fields emitted by fetch_courtlistener.py:

Column	Type	Description
`case_name`	str	Case name
`court`	str	Court name
`court_id`	str	Court ID (e.g. `nysd`, `scotus`, `ca9`)
`date_filed`	str	YYYY-MM-DD
`docket_number`	str	Court docket number
`judge`	str	Judge name(s)
`citation`	str	Reporter citation(s)
`result_type`	str	opinions / dockets / oral / people
`snippet`	str	Search-match snippet (up to 500 chars)
`absolute_url`	str	Direct CourtListener URL

4. Coverage

Federal: all circuit and district courts, SCOTUS
State: all 50 state supreme/appellate courts, many trial courts
Opinions: ~10M back to 1600s (colonial), full coverage 1950 → present
Dockets via RECAP: ~3M+ from user-submitted PACER PDFs
Updated continuously

5. Cross-Reference Potential

OpenCorporates ↔ case_name (corporate litigation)
SEC EDGAR ↔ case_name (securities class actions)
OFAC SDN ↔ case_name (sanctions-related civil/criminal cases)

Join key: party name from case_name. Note: case_name often abbreviates ("Smith v. Jones" rather than full party names) — use the full case URL to get all parties.

6. Data Quality

Older opinions (pre-1990) often lack docket numbers and judges
State coverage is more uneven than federal
PACER docket coverage depends on RECAP user submissions — not exhaustive
Sealed documents are excluded
Party names in case captions don't always match filing names exactly

7. Acquisition Script

Path: scripts/fetch_courtlistener.py

# Search opinions for a party / keyword
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_courtlistener.py --query "Example Corp" \
    --out data/cl.csv

# PACER dockets (best for recent litigation)
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_courtlistener.py --query "Example Corp" \
    --type dockets --out data/cl_dockets.csv

# Restrict to a court
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_courtlistener.py --query "Microsoft" \
    --court ca9 --out data/cl_9th.csv

# Date range
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_courtlistener.py --query "Example Corp" \
    --date-from 2020-01-01 --date-to 2024-12-31 --out data/cl.csv

Pass --token or set COURTLISTENER_TOKEN.

8. Legal & Licensing

Court opinions are public domain
Free Law Project provides the data under CC0 / public domain dedication
No commercial use restrictions on opinion text or metadata
Some PACER PDFs have copyright on layout (not text) — fair use applies

9. References

API docs: https://www.courtlistener.com/help/api/rest/
Court IDs: https://www.courtlistener.com/api/jurisdictions/
RECAP archive: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/
Bulk data: https://www.courtlistener.com/help/api/bulk-data/