/courtlistener/oral-arguments/search

POST /api/courtlistener/oral-arguments/search

Price: 1 credit

Search oral argument recordings by full-text query, court, judge, case name, docket and date

How to use it

Search oral argument audio recordings on CourtListener. Combine a full-text query (over transcripts) with filters for court, judge, case name, docket number and argument date range; order by relevance or argument date. Each result has the case name, court, docket, judge, audio download url, duration and a transcript snippet.

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 oral argument transcripts and metadata
• case_name string nullable — Filter by case name
• judge string nullable — Filter by judge name
• court string nullable — Court id(s) to filter by, space-separated (examples: "ca9")
• docket_number string nullable — Filter by docket number
• argued_after string nullable — Only arguments heard on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• argued_before string nullable — Only arguments heard on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• order_by string — Result ordering (default: "score desc"; one of: "score desc", "dateArgued desc", "dateArgued asc")
• count integer required — Number of oral arguments to return (min: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "CourtlistenerOralArgumentResult")
• id integer required
• case_name string nullable
• case_name_full string nullable
• court string nullable
• court_id string nullable
• court_citation_string string nullable
• docket_id integer nullable
• docket_number string nullable
• judge string nullable
• duration integer nullable
• file_size_mp3 integer nullable
• download_url string nullable
• local_path string nullable
• sha1 string nullable
• snippet string nullable
• source string nullable
• pacer_case_id string nullable
• panel_ids array (default: [])
• 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.