CourtListener Court Opinions Scraper — Free Case Law Search

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🎯 What this scrapes

This Actor searches CourtListener's free, keyless full-text case-law API (opinions only — not RECAP/PACER dockets) and returns one structured row per matching case. Each row carries the case name, court, filing date, citation(s), cite count, and a direct link to the opinion.

CourtListener's search already covers 240,000+ U.S. court opinions for free — the work we sell is the handling: following CourtListener's cursor-based pagination correctly, isolating one malformed result so it doesn't crash the whole run, and shipping a clean, nullable dataset schema instead of a raw API passthrough.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🛡️ We rotate browser fingerprints (curl-cffi impersonation) so every request looks like a real browser, not Python.
• 🔁 We retry with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 503 and honour Retry-After — up to 5 attempts per page.
• 🌐 We rotate residential proxies through Apify Proxy on every retry — fresh session, fresh exit IP.
• 🧱 We isolate per-row failures — one malformed result is skipped and logged, the run keeps going.
• 🧊 We keep the dataset clean — Pydantic-validated rows, nullable fields typed correctly, a stable url on every row.
• 💰 You pay only for cases that land. A search that matches nothing still succeeds — you're never charged for a failed run.

💡 Use cases

• Legal research — pull every opinion matching a legal question, party name, or topic for a memo or brief.
• Litigation support — build a bulk case-law dataset for a matter without a PACER/docket subscription.
• Legal-tech products — feed a clean, structured case-law dataset into your own search or citation tool.
• Compliance / due diligence — check whether a party, company, or topic shows up in published case law.
• Academic research — pull opinions filed within a date range or court for empirical legal studies.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Enter a Query — free text, e.g. "miranda rights".
3. Optionally narrow with Court (a CourtListener short code like scotus), Filed after / Filed before dates, or change Order by.
4. Set Max results (up to 1,000).
5. Click Start. Rows stream into the run's dataset as CourtListener's cursor pages are followed.
6. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
query	string	yes	—	Free-text search against CourtListener's full-text opinion index.
court	string	no	—	Court short code (e.g. scotus). Omit to search all courts.
filedAfter	string	no	—	YYYY-MM-DD — only opinions filed on or after this date.
filedBefore	string	no	—	YYYY-MM-DD — only opinions filed on or before this date.
orderBy	string	no	"score desc"	One of score desc, dateFiled desc, dateFiled asc, citeCount desc.
maxResults	integer	no	100	Cap on total rows across all cursor pages (1-1,000).
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Apify Proxy configuration.

Example input

{
  "query": "miranda rights",
  "maxResults": 100,
  "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": true}
}

📤 Output

Every row is one matched court opinion.

Field	Type	Notes
cluster_id	integer	CourtListener's internal opinion-cluster ID.
case_name	string	Short case name (e.g. "Miranda v. Arizona").
case_name_full	string	Full case name/caption as filed.
court	string	Human-readable court name.
court_id	string	CourtListener's court short code (e.g. "scotus").
court_citation_string	string	Court's citation-reporter abbreviation.
court_jurisdiction	string | null	Court jurisdiction label, when published.
date_filed	string | null	ISO YYYY-MM-DD filing date, when published.
date_argued	string | null	ISO YYYY-MM-DD argument date, when published.
citation	array<string>	Reporter citation(s) for this opinion (may be empty).
cite_count	integer	Number of times this opinion has been cited.
attorney	string | null	Attorney(s) of record, when published.
url	string	Direct CourtListener URL to the full opinion page.

Example output

{
  "cluster_id": 10353022,
  "case_name": "Miranda v. Arizona",
  "case_name_full": "Ernesto A. Miranda v. State of Arizona",
  "court": "Supreme Court of the United States",
  "court_id": "scotus",
  "court_citation_string": "U.S.",
  "court_jurisdiction": null,
  "date_filed": "1966-06-13",
  "date_argued": null,
  "citation": ["384 U.S. 436"],
  "cite_count": 8421,
  "attorney": "",
  "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10353022/miranda-v-arizona/"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.05	One-off warm-up charge per run
result-scraped	$0.005	Per case-opinion row written to the dataset

Example: 100 matched rows ≈ $0.55 total per run; at 1,000 rows that's $5.05/1,000 ($0.05 start + 1000 x $0.005). No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account free credit.

🚧 Limitations

This Actor covers opinion search only (type=o) — RECAP/PACER dockets and oral arguments are out of scope for v1. It returns metadata and search snippets, not full opinion-body text. CourtListener's rate limits aren't stress-tested beyond a handful of requests, so sustained heavy pagination may hit retries. maxResults is capped at 1,000 rows per run.

❓ FAQ

Does this need a CourtListener account or API key?

No. CourtListener's /api/rest/v4/search/ endpoint is free and keyless for opinion search.

Does this cover PACER/RECAP dockets?

No — v1 is opinion search (type=o) only. Dockets and oral arguments are a candidate for a future version.

What happens if my query matches nothing?

The run finishes successfully with zero rows and a status message naming the query — you're not charged for a failed run.

Can I filter by court or date range?

Yes — set court to a CourtListener short code (e.g. scotus) and/or filedAfter/filedBefore to narrow results server-side.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need dockets/oral-argument coverage? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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