ICJ Case Law, Judgment & Advisory Opinion Scraper

Scrape case law from the International Court of Justice, the United Nations' principal judicial organ. Returns judgments, advisory opinions, orders, and separate / dissenting opinions as paragraph-numbered records — the citation format international lawyers actually use — across contentious and advisory cases dating back to 1946, in English and French.

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ICJ Scraper Features

• Extracts every judgment, advisory opinion, order, declaration, separate opinion, dissenting opinion, and written pleading the Court has published for a case.
• Returns paragraph-numbered text, matching how international-law practitioners cite ICJ decisions ("para. 142").
• Captures the operative paragraph — the "FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT..." dispositif — as its own field, separate from the reasoning.
• Pulls a best-effort judge vote tabulation out of the dispositif when the Court records a roll call, with each judge's role (President, Vice-President, member, ad hoc) and vote.
• Parses applicant and respondent states straight out of the case title for contentious cases.
• Cross-references which judges filed a separate or dissenting opinion on a given judgment.
• Covers both English and French editions. A document published in only one combined bilingual edition still comes back, tagged accordingly.
• Three ways to scope a run: every case, a specific case number, or everything published since a given date.

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Who Uses ICJ Case Data?

• International law firms — track jurisprudence on treaty interpretation, state responsibility, and sovereignty disputes without re-reading the docket by hand.
• Foreign-ministry legal teams — monitor a case your state is a party to, or benchmark how the Court has ruled on a comparable dispute.
• Academics and researchers — build a citation-accurate corpus for scholarship, without re-typing paragraph numbers out of a PDF.
• Geopolitical risk analysts — follow high-profile proceedings (genocide-convention cases, maritime and territorial disputes) as new orders and judgments land.
• Journalists — get the dispositif the moment it's published, in the Court's own numbered-paragraph form, instead of paraphrasing a press release.

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How the ICJ Scraper Works

1. Pick a scope — every case, one or more case numbers, or everything published since a date.
2. The scraper walks the Court's case index and pulls every document on each matching case page.
3. Each document is returned as paragraph-numbered text with its own dispositif, document type, and case metadata attached — no separate lookup needed to know which case or party a document belongs to.

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Input

{
  "mode": "since_date",
  "sinceDate": "2024-01-01",
  "documentTypes": ["judgment", "advisory_opinion", "order"],
  "languages": ["en"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	since_date	all_cases walks every case; case_ids visits only the case numbers you list; since_date walks every case but keeps only documents on or after sinceDate.
caseIds	array	[]	ICJ case numbers to scan (e.g. 192 for the South Africa v. Israel genocide-convention case). Used only in case_ids mode.
sinceDate	string	2023-01-01	ISO date. Only documents on or after this date are returned. Used only in since_date mode.
documentTypes	array	judgment, advisory opinion, order, separate opinion, dissenting opinion	Which document types to include. Also accepts declaration, written pleading, and oral proceeding (verbatim record). Leave empty for every type.
languages	array	["en"]	Which language edition of each document to return — en, fr, or both.
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum number of document records to return.

Example — pull every document for one case:

{
  "mode": "case_ids",
  "caseIds": ["192"],
  "documentTypes": [],
  "languages": ["en", "fr"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

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ICJ Scraper Output Fields

{
  "case_id": 192,
  "case_name": "Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)",
  "case_type": "contentious",
  "applicant_state": "South Africa",
  "respondent_state": "Israel",
  "filing_date": "2023-12-29",
  "status": "pending",
  "document_type": "order",
  "document_date": "2026-05-21",
  "document_language": "en",
  "document_phase": "provisional_measures",
  "judges": ["President Salam (president) — with", "Tomka (member) — with"],
  "separate_opinion_authors": [],
  "dissenting_opinion_authors": [],
  "document_url": "https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20260521-ord-01-00-en.pdf",
  "document_paragraphs": ["1. The Court begins its reasoning here.", "2. The Court continues..."],
  "operative_paragraph_text": "For these reasons, The Court, (1) Unanimously, Finds that it has jurisdiction..."
}

Field	Type	Description
case_id	integer	ICJ case number.
case_name	string	Full case name.
case_type	string	contentious or advisory.
applicant_state	string	Parsed from the case title. Null for advisory opinions and joint-application cases.
respondent_state	string	Parsed from the case title.
filing_date	string	Date the case was introduced (ISO date). Null when the Court's own case index hasn't recorded one yet.
status	string	pending or concluded.
document_type	string	judgment, advisory_opinion, order, declaration, separate_opinion, dissenting_opinion, written_pleading, or oral_proceeding.
document_date	string	Date the document was issued (ISO date).
document_language	string	en, fr, or bi (bilingual edition, used when no separate-language file exists).
document_phase	string	Procedural phase tag when the Court publishes one (provisional measures, preliminary objections, intervention). Null otherwise.
judges	array	Judge vote tabulation, one entry per recorded vote. Populated when the dispositif includes a roll call — orders and shorter rulings often don't carry one.
separate_opinion_authors	array	Judges who filed a separate opinion attached to this document.
dissenting_opinion_authors	array	Judges who filed a dissenting opinion attached to this document.
document_url	string	Direct PDF URL on icj-cij.org.
document_paragraphs	array	Numbered paragraphs as "N. text" strings, matching international-law citation style.
operative_paragraph_text	string	The dispositif. Null for documents that don't carry one, like press releases or verbatim records.

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FAQ

How do I scrape ICJ judgments?

Run this actor with mode: "case_ids" and the case number, or mode: "since_date" to pull everything published after a given date. No account or API key is needed — the Court publishes its decisions openly.

What data can I get from ICJ case law?

Judgments, advisory opinions, orders, and separate or dissenting opinions, returned with paragraph numbering, the operative dispositif, case metadata, and a best-effort judge vote tabulation where the Court recorded one.

Can I filter by document type or language?

Yes. documentTypes narrows a run to just judgments, just orders, or any combination; languages picks English, French, or both.

Do I need an account or API key for icj-cij.org?

No. The Court's case documents are public. You configure the scope you want and run the actor.

Does this cover advisory opinions, or only contentious cases?

Both. case_type tells you which one you're looking at, and advisory opinions get their own document_type rather than being lumped in with judgments.

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Need More Features?

Need a different filter, an additional field, or a related court's case law? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use This ICJ Scraper?

• Citation-accurate — paragraph numbering preserved exactly as the Court publishes it, so you can cite a finding the way a brief would.
• Dispositif as its own field — the operative paragraph is separated from the reasoning that precedes it, which saves you from parsing a 300-page PDF to find the one paragraph that actually decided the case.
• Bilingual by design — English and French editions are both addressable, which matters for a Court that publishes authoritative text in both languages.