/courtlistener/courts/search

POST /api/courtlistener/courts/search

Price: 1 credit

List US courts, optionally filtered by jurisdiction, active use and scraper availability

How to use it

List US courts tracked by CourtListener. Filter by jurisdiction (federal/state/tribal/territory appellate, district, bankruptcy, etc.), whether the court is actively in use, and whether it has an opinion or oral-argument scraper. Each court has its id, names, citation string, jurisdiction and website.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• jurisdiction string nullable — Filter by court jurisdiction type (one of: "F", "FD", "FB", "FBP", "FS", "S", "SA", "ST", "SS", "TRS", "TRA", "TRT", "TRX", "TS", "TA", "TT", "TSP", "SAG", "MA", "MT", "C", "I", "T")
• in_use boolean nullable — Only courts that are actively in use (have data) when true
• has_opinion_scraper boolean nullable — Only courts that have an opinion scraper when true
• has_oral_argument_scraper boolean nullable — Only courts that have an oral argument scraper when true
• count integer required — Number of courts to return (min: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "CourtlistenerCourt")
• id string required
• short_name string nullable
• full_name string nullable
• citation_string string nullable
• jurisdiction string nullable
• in_use boolean (default: false)
• has_opinion_scraper boolean (default: false)
• has_oral_argument_scraper boolean (default: false)
• position number nullable
• web_url string nullable
• pacer_court_id string nullable
• fjc_court_id string nullable
• parent_court string nullable
• appeals_to array (default: [])
• start_at integer nullable
• end_at integer nullable
• updated_at integer nullable

Errors

• 422 — The request body did not validate Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — The entity was not found, or a precondition failed Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.