CourtListener Scraper — US Case Law & Opinions

Search the largest free US legal database — millions of court opinions — from CourtListener (Free Law Project). Case name, court, date filed, docket number, citations, cite count, judge, a text snippet and links. Filter by court and date range across SCOTUS, federal circuits and state courts. Free keyless API; an optional token raises rate limits.

For legal research, LLM datasets, citation-graph building and docket monitoring in an underserved legal niche.

What you get

opinions mode — per case: caseName, caseNameFull, court, courtId, dateFiled, dateArgued, docketNumber, citations[], neutralCite, citeCount, status, judge, clusterId, docketId, suitNature, downloadUrl, opinionId, snippet, absoluteUrl.

courts mode — per court: id, shortName, fullName, jurisdiction, citationString, url, startDate, endDate, inUse.

Output sample (opinions mode)

{
  "caseName": "Harlow v. Fitzgerald",
  "caseNameFull": "Harlow et al. v. Fitzgerald",
  "court": "Supreme Court of the United States",
  "courtId": "scotus",
  "dateFiled": "1982-06-24",
  "dateArgued": "1981-11-30",
  "docketNumber": "80-945",
  "citations": ["457 U.S. 800"],
  "neutralCite": null,
  "citeCount": 15230,
  "status": "Published",
  "judge": "Powell",
  "clusterId": 111278,
  "docketId": 63421,
  "suitNature": "Civil Rights",
  "downloadUrl": "https://.../harlow.pdf",
  "opinionId": 111278,
  "snippet": "Government officials performing discretionary functions...",
  "absoluteUrl": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111278/harlow-v-fitzgerald/"
}

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	opinions (search case law) or courts (list courts).
query	string	Full-text search over opinions.
type	string	o opinions, r RECAP dockets, p judges, oa oral args.
court	string	Court id, e.g. scotus, ca9.
filedAfter / filedBefore	string	Date range, YYYY-MM-DD.
orderBy	string	e.g. dateFiled desc, score desc, citeCount desc.
jurisdiction	string	For courts mode, e.g. F (federal appellate), S (state).
token	string (secret)	Optional CourtListener token for higher limits.
maxResults	integer	Cap on rows (default 100).

Example input

{
  "query": "qualified immunity",
  "court": "scotus",
  "filedAfter": "2015-01-01",
  "orderBy": "dateFiled desc",
  "maxResults": 50
}

List federal courts with {"mode":"courts","jurisdiction":"F","maxResults":50}.

Why this actor

• Largest free US legal corpus — CourtListener's v4 search with proper cursor pagination, so you get whole result sets, not just the first page.
• The filters that matter — full-text query, court, filed-after/before, ordering by relevance/date/citation count.
• Clean normalized rows — citations, docket, judge, snippet and PDF link, suited to research and citation graphs.

Auth

Works keyless. Supplying an optional CourtListener token (free account at courtlistener.com) raises rate limits for larger jobs. Leave it empty to run without one.

Pricing

Pay per result — $5 per 1,000 results (one result = one opinion/case, or one court in courts mode). No subscription; you pay only for what you get.

Notes & limits

• Public data from the Free Law Project; you are responsible for compliant use. Not affiliated with CourtListener/Free Law Project.

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