/courtlistener/judges/search

POST /api/courtlistener/judges/search

Price: 1 credit

Search US judges by name, court, birth date/place, school, appointer, selection method and party

How to use it

Search US judges on CourtListener. Filter by name, court served on, birth date range, birth city or state, school attended, appointer, selection method and political-party affiliation. Each result has the judge's name, gender, race, religion, schools, ABA ratings, party affiliations and judicial positions (court, appointer, selection method and key dates).

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• name string nullable — Filter by judge name
• court string nullable — Court id the judge served on (examples: "cand", "scotus")
• dob_after string nullable — Only judges born on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• dob_before string nullable — Only judges born on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• dob_city string nullable — Filter by city of birth
• dob_state string nullable — Filter by two-letter state of birth (examples: "CA")
• school string nullable — Filter by school attended
• appointer string nullable — Filter by the name of who appointed the judge
• selection_method string nullable — Filter by how the judge was selected (one of: "e_part", "e_non_part", "a_pres", "a_gov", "a_legis")
• political_affiliation string nullable — Filter by political party affiliation (one of: "d", "r", "i", "g", "l", "f", "w", "j", "u", "z")
• order_by string — Result ordering (default: "score desc"; one of: "score desc", "name_reverse asc", "dob desc", "dob asc")
• count integer required — Number of judges to return (min: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "CourtlistenerJudgeResult")
• id integer required
• name string nullable
• gender string nullable
• religion string nullable
• races array (default: [])
• aliases array (default: [])
• schools array (default: [])
• aba_ratings array (default: [])
• political_affiliations array (default: [])
• fjc_id string nullable
• born_at integer nullable
• died_at integer nullable
• dob_city string nullable
• dob_state string nullable
• positions array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "CourtlistenerJudgeSearchPosition")
  • court string nullable
  • court_id string nullable
  • court_citation_string string nullable
  • appointer string nullable
  • job_title string nullable
  • position_type string nullable
  • selection_method string nullable
  • nomination_process string nullable
  • termination_reason string nullable
  • nominated_at integer nullable
  • elected_at integer nullable
  • confirmed_at integer nullable
  • start_at integer nullable
  • terminated_at integer nullable
  • retired_at integer nullable
• web_url string nullable
• score number 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.