Dutch Case Law Database — Rechtspraak Scraper

Scrapes published Dutch court judgments from Rechtspraak, the Dutch judiciary's open-data service. Returns full judgment text, case metadata, court and procedure details, and the citation graph linking a judgment to its appeal or first-instance decision — across every court tier, not just the district courts.

---

Rechtspraak Scraper Features

• Covers every court tier — rechtbanken, gerechtshoven, the Hoge Raad, Raad van State, Centrale Raad van Beroep and College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven, all in one feed
• Returns the full judgment text and the court's own abstract (inhoudsindicatie), not just a title and a link
• Emits the citation graph — related ECLIs linking an appeal to the judgment it appealed and the cassation to both
• Flags has_full_text honestly. A share of published ECLIs are metadata-only, and this scraper says so instead of shipping a silent empty field
• Filters by date range, court tier and law area, or skip straight to specific ECLIs you already know
• Pulls statutory citations straight out of the judgment text where the source's own metadata doesn't carry them

---

Who Uses Dutch Case Law Data?

• Legal AI teams — build or fine-tune models on structured Dutch case law instead of scraped HTML
• Litigation analytics vendors — track how a legal question moved from rechtbank to Hoge Raad using the citation graph
• Compliance and research teams — monitor rulings in a specific rechtsgebied (law area) as they publish
• Academic researchers — pull a court's full published history for a study, one ECLI at a time or by date range
• Legal publishers — source raw judgment text and metadata for annotation or indexing, rather than re-typing it

---

How the Rechtspraak Scraper Works

1. Give it a date range (or leave it blank for the last week) and it walks the open-data index day by day, collecting every ECLI published in that window.
2. Each ECLI gets its own lookup against the content endpoint, which returns the full judgment text, the court's abstract, and the citation and legislation metadata attached to it.
3. Already know the ECLIs you want? Pass them directly and the scraper skips the date walk entirely.
4. Every judgment ships as one structured record — no HTML, no re-parsing a deeplink page yourself.

---

Input

{
  "startDate": "2026-08-01",
  "endDate": "2026-08-05",
  "courtTypes": ["raad van state"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
startDate	String	last 6 days	Earliest decision date to include (YYYY-MM-DD).
endDate	String	today	Latest decision date to include (YYYY-MM-DD).
courtTypes	Array	all tiers	One or more of rechtbank, gerechtshof, hoge raad, raad van state, crvb, cbb. Leave empty for every tier, including the tuchtrecht (disciplinary) collections.
lawAreas	Array	all areas	Keep only judgments whose rechtsgebied contains one of these substrings (e.g. "Strafrecht", "Bestuursrecht"), case-insensitive.
eclis	Array	—	Exact ECLI identifiers to fetch directly, skipping the date walk. Overrides startDate/endDate/courtTypes/lawAreas.
maxItems	Integer	15	Maximum number of judgments to return this run.

Direct ECLI lookup

{
  "eclis": ["ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2026:8495", "ECLI:NL:RVS:2026:4585"],
  "maxItems": 2
}

---

Rechtspraak Scraper Output Fields

{
  "ecli": "ECLI:NL:RVS:2026:4585",
  "court": "Raad van State",
  "court_type": "raad van state",
  "court_abbreviation": "RVS",
  "decision_date": "2026-08-05",
  "publication_date": "2026-08-05",
  "case_number": "202502205/1/A2",
  "procedure_type": "Hoger beroep",
  "law_area": ["Bestuursrecht"],
  "summary": "...",
  "full_text": "...",
  "related_ecli": ["ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2025:5874"],
  "cited_legislation": ["artikel 8:69 Awb"],
  "annotations": ["JB 2026/142"],
  "has_full_text": true,
  "source_url": "https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:RVS:2026:4585",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-27T16:09:52.000Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
ecli	String	ECLI identifier — the primary key (e.g. ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2026:8495).
court	String	Full court name (e.g. Rechtbank Amsterdam, Hoge Raad).
court_type	String	Court tier — rechtbank, gerechtshof, hoge raad, raad van state, CRvB, CBb, or overig for tuchtrecht and other bodies outside those six.
court_abbreviation	String	Court abbreviation as used in the ECLI (e.g. RBAMS, HR, GHDHA).
decision_date	String	Date the judgment was decided (uitspraakdatum), ISO-8601.
publication_date	String	Date the judgment was published to the open-data feed, ISO-8601.
case_number	String	Zaaknummer, as published — may contain backslashes and spaces.
procedure_type	String	Procedure type(s), joined with ; when more than one applies.
law_area	Array	Rechtsgebied — one or more subject-area strings.
summary	String	Inhoudsindicatie — the court's own abstract of the judgment.
full_text	String	Full judgment text.
related_ecli	Array	ECLIs of related judgments — appeal, cassation, or the first-instance decision. Empty when the judgment has no recorded relations.
cited_legislation	Array	Statutory articles cited in the judgment text. Sparse — not every judgment cites legislation by name.
annotations	Array	Vindplaatsen / journal citations (e.g. NJ 2026/142). Sparse — most judgments carry none.
has_full_text	Boolean	true when the content endpoint returned an actual judgment document. A share of published ECLIs are metadata-only, and this field says so rather than leaving full_text silently empty.
source_url	String	Public rechtspraak.nl deeplink for this ECLI.
scraped_at	String	Timestamp this record was scraped.

---

FAQ

How do I scrape Rechtspraak case law?

Rechtspraak Scraper needs no account and no API key. Give it a date range, or a specific list of ECLIs, and it returns structured judgments — full text, metadata, and citations included.

How much does the Rechtspraak Scraper cost to run?

Pricing follows the standard pay-per-result profile: a small per-run fee plus a per-record charge. Check the Apify pricing tab on the actor page for current numbers.

Can I filter by court or law area?

Yes. Set courtTypes to one or more tiers (rechtbank, gerechtshof, hoge raad, raad van state, crvb, cbb), and lawAreas to a rechtsgebied keyword like "Strafrecht" or "Bestuursrecht". Leave either blank to include everything.

Does this scraper cover the Hoge Raad and Raad van State, or only district courts?

Every tier is included by default — rechtbanken through the Hoge Raad and Raad van State, plus the Centrale Raad van Beroep and College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven. Use courtTypes to narrow it down if you only want one.

What if a judgment has no full text available?

Some published ECLIs are metadata-only — the case is published but the document itself isn't attached yet. Those records still come back with has_full_text: false so you can tell the difference, instead of a full_text field that's silently empty.

---

Need More Features?

Need custom fields, filters, or a different target site? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use the Rechtspraak Scraper?

• Every court tier, not just district courts — the Hoge Raad and Raad van State are the tiers that actually set precedent, and they're included by default
• The citation graph as a real field — related_ecli links a cassation to the appeal to the first-instance judgment, which turns a pile of documents into a corpus you can actually trace
• Honest about gaps — has_full_text tells you which records are metadata-only instead of pretending every ECLI has a document