Federal Judicial Center Scraper
Pricing
from $19.00 / 1,000 results
Federal Judicial Center Scraper
Scrapes federal judge profiles from the FJC Biographical Directory. Returns each judge as a flat row with appointment history, education, court type, and appointing president. Filter by court, party, or active status.
Pricing
from $19.00 / 1,000 results
Rating
0.0
(0)
Developer
ParseForge
Maintained by CommunityActor stats
0
Bookmarked
2
Total users
1
Monthly active users
2 days ago
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Federal Judicial Center Scraper
Scrape complete federal judge profiles from the Federal Judicial Center’s Biographical Directory, from the Supreme Court to District Courts. Every record includes appointing president, party, court history, education, and service dates. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
The Federal Judicial Center publishes the official biographical directory of every federal judge who has served since 1789, but browsing it one judge at a time makes large-scale analysis impossible. This Actor reads the entire directory, or a filtered subset, and returns structured profiles in a single dataset. You can filter by court type, appointing president’s party, or active status, and search by judge name.
| Who uses it | What they scrape Federal Judicial Center for |
|---|---|
| Legal researchers | Analyze the career paths and educational backgrounds of Article III judges over two centuries. |
| Journalists | Investigate the demographic and political composition of the federal judiciary at a point in time. |
| Political scientists | Study the relationship between appointing presidents, party affiliation, and judicial tenure length. |
| Law firms | Build a searchable internal database of sitting judges’ professional histories before a case assignment. |
What it does
This Actor collects federal judge profiles from the FJC Biographical Directory and returns each judge as a flat row with their full career history, education, and appointment details.
- ⚖️ Court type filter: restrict results to U.S. District Court, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court, or historical circuit courts.
- 🐘 Appointing party filter: select judges first appointed by a Democratic, Republican, Whig, Federalist, or Democratic-Republican president.
- ✅ Active status toggle: return only judges who are still serving, with no termination date on their first appointment.
- 🔍 Name search: filter by last name, first name, or a partial match to find a specific judge or a family of jurists.
Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.
What you can do with Federal Judicial Center data
📊 Map the judiciary’s political composition.
A political scientist filters by appointing party and court type to chart how the partisan balance of the federal bench has shifted across administrations.
📰 Profile a judicial nominee’s future colleagues.
A reporter scrapes all active district court judges to compare a nominee’s background against the sitting bench they would join.
🏛️ Audit judicial vacancies and tenure.
A legal watchdog exports every judge who has left the bench, along with their termination reason and service length, to identify courts with the longest vacancies.
🎓 Trace law school pipelines to the bench.
A law school administrator scrapes the full directory to count how many alumni have served as federal judges, broken down by court level.
Why choose this scraper
| What you get | |
|---|---|
| No API key or registration | The FJC directory is public. This Actor reads it directly with no account setup. |
| Fixed, flat schema | Every judge profile is returned in the same predictable format, ready for analysis. |
| Historical depth | Covers every Article III judge from the founding of the federal courts to the present day. |
| Flexible filtering | Combine court type, party, and active status to isolate exactly the cohort you need. |
How it compares
This Actor scrapes the FJC Biographical Directory for judge profiles, while the competitors below scrape CourtListener for court records, dockets, and opinions. They serve different research needs.
| Feature | ParseForge | Court Records Scraper | Court Records Scraper - Case Law, Dockets & Judges | Federal Court Records Scraper - PACER RECAP & Opinions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrapes FJC Biographical Directory | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Full judge career history and education | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Filter by appointing president's party | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Filter by court type | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Not listed |
| Active judge status filter | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Court opinions and dockets | Not listed | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Configure the run
Drive the Actor with an optional name filter, court type, appointing president’s party, and an active-status toggle. Filters run as each profile is read so only matching judges reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.
A first run with the defaults:
A larger pull:
Pricing
Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.
| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $2.10 |
| 1,000 results | $21.00 |
| 10,000 results | $210.00 |
New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.
Free users
Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.
Run it
- Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
- Open the Federal Judicial Center Scraper.
- Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
- Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.
Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.
Use with AI agents (MCP)
Give an AI agent live access to Federal Judicial Center through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:
Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.
Troubleshooting
Why am I getting no results?
Check that your name filter is spelled correctly and that your court type and party filters are not too restrictive. Try clearing all filters and running with only a name or with no filters to see the full dataset.
Why does the run stop after 10 records?
Free Apify accounts are limited to 10 records per run as a preview. Upgrade to a paid plan to increase the maximum records limit and scrape the full directory.
Why are some judges missing from the results?
The FJC directory covers only Article III federal judges. If you are looking for a magistrate judge, bankruptcy judge, or state court judge, they will not appear. Also confirm your filters are not excluding the judge you expect.
Why does the ‘Still Serving Only’ filter return judges I know have retired?
The filter checks only the first appointment record for a termination date. A judge who took senior status or moved to a different court may still have an open first appointment. Review the full profile data for a complete picture.
Can I get the data faster?
The Actor reads each judge’s profile page individually from the FJC website. Running with no filters will take longer because it processes the entire directory. Use filters to narrow your request and reduce runtime.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is the Federal Judicial Center Biographical Directory? | It is the official U.S. government database of every judge who has served in an Article III federal court since 1789. The FJC maintains it as a public historical record. |
| Does this Actor include state court judges? | No. The FJC directory covers only Article III federal judges: Supreme Court, Courts of Appeals, District Courts, and the historical Circuit Courts. State judges are not included. |
| Can I filter by a specific appointing president? | You can filter by the appointing president’s party, not by an individual president. The output includes the appointing president’s full name, so you can filter further in your spreadsheet or database. |
| What does the ‘Still Serving Only’ toggle do? | When enabled, the Actor returns only judges whose first appointment has no termination date. This gives you the currently active federal bench. |
| Does this Actor return magistrate or bankruptcy judges? | No. The FJC directory covers Article III judges. Magistrate and bankruptcy judges are not Article III judges and are not included in this dataset. |
| What information is included in each judge’s profile? | Each row includes the judge’s full name, birth and death dates, appointing president and party, court type, commission date, termination date and reason, education, and professional career history. |
| Can I search for a judge by partial name? | Yes. The name filter accepts partial matches, so searching for a last name or a few letters of a first name will return all matching judges. |
| Is there a limit on how many judges I can scrape? | Free users are limited to 10 records as a preview. Paid Apify plans can scrape up to the full directory, which contains several thousand judges. |
| How often is the FJC directory updated? | The FJC updates the directory regularly as judges retire, take senior status, or pass away. You can run this Actor on a schedule to keep your dataset current. |
| Can I export the data to Google Sheets? | Yes. Apify supports direct export to CSV, JSON, Excel, and XML. You can also use Apify integrations to send the data to Google Sheets, Airtable, or a webhook. |
Related actors
Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.
🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.
⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Federal Judicial Center. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.
