/courtlistener/opinions/search

POST /api/courtlistener/opinions/search

Price: 1 credit

Search US court opinions by full-text query, court, judge, citation, date and citation count

How to use it

Search US court opinions (case law) on CourtListener. Combine a full-text query with filters for court, judge, case name, docket number, reporter or neutral citation, filing date range, citation count range and precedential status; order by relevance, filing date, citation count or argument date. Each result is an opinion cluster with case name, court, docket, citations, citation count, judges, status and the individual opinions (lead, concurring, dissenting) with snippets and download links.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• q string nullable — Full-text query over opinion text, case name and metadata
• court string nullable — Court id(s) to filter by, space-separated (examples: "scotus", "ca9 cadc")
• judge string nullable — Filter by authoring or panel judge name
• case_name string nullable — Filter by case name
• docket_number string nullable — Filter by docket number
• citation string nullable — Filter by reporter citation (examples: "576 U.S. 644")
• neutral_cite string nullable — Filter by neutral citation
• filed_after string nullable — Only opinions filed on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• filed_before string nullable — Only opinions filed on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• cited_gt integer nullable — Only opinions cited more than this many times (min: 0)
• cited_lt integer nullable — Only opinions cited fewer than this many times (min: 0)
• status string nullable — Filter by precedential status (one of: "Published", "Unpublished", "Errata", "Separate", "In-chambers", "Relating-to", "Unknown")
• order_by string — Result ordering (default: "score desc"; one of: "score desc", "dateFiled desc", "dateFiled asc", "citeCount desc", "citeCount asc", "dateArgued desc", "dateArgued asc")
• count integer required — Number of opinions to return (min: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "CourtlistenerOpinion")
• cluster_id integer required
• docket_id integer nullable
• case_name string nullable
• case_name_full string nullable
• court string nullable
• court_id string nullable
• court_citation_string string nullable
• court_jurisdiction string nullable
• docket_number string nullable
• judge string nullable
• attorney string nullable
• citations array (default: [])
• lexis_cite string nullable
• neutral_cite string nullable
• cite_count integer (default: 0)
• status string nullable
• source string nullable
• scdb_id string nullable
• posture string nullable
• procedural_history string nullable
• suit_nature string nullable
• syllabus string nullable
• panel_ids array (default: [])
• panel_names array (default: [])
• non_participating_judge_ids array (default: [])
• sibling_ids array (default: [])
• opinions array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "CourtlistenerOpinionDoc")
  • id integer required
  • opinion_type string nullable
  • author_id integer nullable
  • per_curiam boolean (default: false)
  • download_url string nullable
  • local_path string nullable
  • sha1 string nullable
  • snippet string nullable
  • ordering_key integer nullable
  • cites array (default: [])
  • joined_by_ids array (default: [])
• filed_at integer nullable
• argued_at integer nullable
• reargued_at integer nullable
• reargument_denied_at integer nullable
• created_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.