Portuguese Case Law: Court Decisions (DGSI)

Search Portuguese case law in seconds, straight from the official court databases.

This Actor searches the decisions that the Portuguese courts publish on dgsi.pt, the case-law databases of the Ministry of Justice (IGFEJ): about 390,000 decisions of the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ), the Supreme Administrative Court (STA), the five Courts of Appeal (Relações), the two Central Administrative Courts and the Tribunal dos Conflitos. Search by words, judge rapporteur, descriptor or date, and get each decision with its summary, descriptors and full text, newest first. Or schedule it and get only the new decisions on your topics.

✨ Why use it

• ⚖️ Ten courts in one search: STJ, STA, Lisboa, Porto, Coimbra, Guimarães, Évora, TCA Sul, TCA Norte and Conflitos.
• 🆕 Newest first: dgsi.pt returns results in no useful order and stops at 1,000 per search. This Actor splits the search by date so you always get the most recent decisions.
• 🔔 Case-law alerts: New decisions only mode returns just what was published since your last run. Schedule it weekly per topic or per client.
• 📄 Clean, complete records: case number, date, rapporteur, descriptors, vote, type of appeal, outcome, summary and full text, in Excel, CSV or JSON.
• 🤖 Ready for legal AI: full texts with paragraphs kept, ideal for search, RAG and summarisation pipelines.
• 💸 Pay per decision: $0.002 each. 100 decisions with full text cost $0.20.

⚖️ Courts covered

Code	Court	Decisions on dgsi.pt
STJ	Supremo Tribunal de Justiça	about 74,000
STA	Supremo Tribunal Administrativo	about 90,000
TRL	Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa	about 62,000
TRP	Tribunal da Relação do Porto	about 64,000
TRC	Tribunal da Relação de Coimbra	about 17,000
TRG	Tribunal da Relação de Guimarães	about 16,000
TRE	Tribunal da Relação de Évora	about 19,000
TCAS	Tribunal Central Administrativo Sul	about 31,000
TCAN	Tribunal Central Administrativo Norte	about 21,000
TCONF	Tribunal dos Conflitos	about 1,300

Around 1,000 new decisions are published every month across these courts.

💡 Use cases

• Law firms and in-house counsel: research the latest case law on a question, or follow a topic, a type of appeal or a judge.
• Tax advisers: follow the tax sections of the STA and the Central Administrative Courts.
• Legal tech and AI teams: build a searchable corpus of Portuguese case law for RAG, classification or summarisation.
• Banks, insurers and debt collectors: watch how the courts decide on the contracts and clauses you rely on.
• Academics, students and journalists: collect decisions on a subject for a study or an article.

🚀 How to use it

1. Click Try for free.
2. Type your search words, for example "abuso de direito", and choose the courts. Add a rapporteur, a descriptor or a date range if you want.
3. Run it and download the decisions as Excel, CSV or JSON, or read them from the Apify API.
4. Following a topic? Switch to New decisions only, give the alert a Monitor ID and schedule it weekly. Send the results to email, Slack, Make, Zapier or n8n.

📥 Input examples

The 20 most recent decisions on abuse of rights in the Supreme Court and the Lisbon and Porto Courts of Appeal:

{ "query": "\"abuso de direito\"", "courts": ["STJ", "TRL", "TRP"], "maxResultsPerCourt": 20 }

Everything one judge decided in 2026 in the Supreme Court, summaries only:

{ "rapporteur": "ANA PAULA LOBO", "courts": ["STJ"], "dateFrom": "2026-01-01", "maxResultsPerCourt": 200, "includeFullText": false }

Weekly alert for new urban-lease decisions in every court:

{ "descriptor": "ARRENDAMENTO URBANO", "mode": "new", "monitorId": "arrendamento-urbano", "maxResultsPerCourt": 100 }

Search syntax is the one of dgsi.pt: AND, OR, NOT, "exact phrase" and * as a wildcard, for example arrend* AND despejo.

📦 Output

One row per decision:

{
  "decisionId": "TRL-43aecbbb0459013280258e8f003df25c",
  "court": "TRL",
  "courtName": "Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa",
  "caseNumber": "15881/19.6T8LSB.L1-6",
  "decisionDate": "2026-10-08",
  "rapporteur": "ANTÓNIO SANTOS",
  "descriptors": ["CONTRATO PROMESSA", "CÔNJUGE", "EXECUÇÃO ESPECÍFICA"],
  "vote": "UNANIMIDADE",
  "proceduralMeans": "APELAÇÃO",
  "decision": "IMPROCEDENTE",
  "summary": "4.1. - Se incumprido o contrato-promessa, pode o contraente fiel, na falta de convenção em contrário, obter sentença que produza os efeitos…",
  "hasFullText": true,
  "fullText": "Acordam os Juízes na 6ª Secção Cível do Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa…",
  "url": "https://www.dgsi.pt/jtrl.nsf/33182fc732316039802565fa00497eec/43aecbbb0459013280258e8f003df25c?OpenDocument",
  "source": "IGFEJ — Bases Jurídico-Documentais (dgsi.pt)",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-14T20:30:00+00:00"
}

Other fields, filled when the court publishes them: section, subjectArea, legislation, documentNumber, conventionalNumber and license. The dataset view Decisions shows date, court, case, rapporteur, descriptors, outcome, summary and link.

💰 How much does it cost?

Event	Price
Decision (one row)	$0.002

Higher Apify plans get volume discounts. 100 decisions cost $0.20 and 1,000 cost $2, with or without full text. A weekly alert that finds 15 new decisions costs $0.03. You can set a maximum cost per run in the run options; the Actor stops when it is reached.

🔍 Good to know

• Publication delay: courts publish their decisions on dgsi.pt days or weeks after they are given. Alerts look at decisions given in the last 120 days, so late publications are still caught.
• First run of an alert: it returns the newest matching decisions and marks every other existing one as seen. From then on you get only new decisions.
• Full text: most recent decisions have it. Many older ones, especially before 2000, only have a summary (hasFullText: false).
• Personal data: the courts anonymise the parties before publishing. This Actor never returns the party fields of the databases (Recorrente, Recorrido). The rapporteur is the judge who wrote the decision, as published by the court.
• Without search words, rapporteur or descriptor, the Actor returns the decisions of the last 30 days.
• If one database is temporarily unavailable, the run continues with the other courts and the status message says which one is missing.

🇵🇹 Jurisprudência portuguesa

Pesquisa os acórdãos do STJ, do STA, das Relações de Lisboa, Porto, Coimbra, Guimarães e Évora, dos TCA Sul e Norte e do Tribunal dos Conflitos publicados no dgsi.pt. Pesquisa por palavras, relator, descritor ou data, com os mais recentes primeiro, e recebe cada acórdão com sumário, descritores e texto integral em Excel, CSV ou JSON. Com o modo New decisions only e um agendamento semanal, recebe alertas de jurisprudência só com os acórdãos novos sobre os temas que acompanha.

❓ FAQ

Is this the official database? The data comes from the official dgsi.pt databases of the Ministry of Justice (IGFEJ). This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by IGFEJ or the courts.

Does it include the Constitutional Court? Not yet. Its decisions are published on its own website.

Can I get every decision on a topic, not just the newest? Yes. Raise Max decisions per court (up to 1,000 per court and run) and narrow the dates if needed.

Something looks wrong? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab with the input you used. Issues are answered within a few days.

📚 Source

Data	Publisher	Terms
Court decisions	IGFEJ — Bases Jurídico-Documentais (dgsi.pt), Ministério da Justiça	Public decisions, anonymised by the courts. Cite the court, the case number and dgsi.pt.

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