Case Law Scraper

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Search and retrieve US court opinions from CourtListener — the largest open-access legal database with over 4 million court opinions from federal and state courts dating back to the founding era.

No API key required for basic use. A free CourtListener API token provides higher rate limits.

What This Actor Does

• Search cases by keyword (boolean search supported: AND, OR, NOT)
• Filter by court (Supreme Court, Circuit Courts, District Courts, State Courts)
• Filter by jurisdiction type (Federal, State, Committee, Territory)
• Filter by decision date range
• Filter by publication status (Published, Unpublished, etc.)
• Fetch cases by jurisdiction slug (e.g., all California cases)
• Lookup specific cases by cluster ID
• Returns: case name, citations, court, judge, date, opinion snippets, download URLs, and more

Input

Example Inputs

Search freedom of speech cases:

{
"mode":"searchCases",
"searchQuery":"freedom of speech",
"maxItems":50
}

Search SCOTUS cases since 2010:

{
"mode":"searchCases",
"searchQuery":"first amendment",
"court":"scotus",
"decisionDateMin":"2010-01-01",
"maxItems":25
}

Get all California Supreme Court cases:

{
"mode":"getCasesByJurisdiction",
"jurisdictionSlug":"cal",
"maxItems":100
}

Fetch specific cases by cluster ID:

{
"mode":"getCaseDetail",
"caseIds":["4637556","9501490"],
"maxItems":10
}

Output

Each record contains:

Sample Output Record

{
"clusterId":4637556,
"caseName":"Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Trump",
"caseNameFull":"KNIGHT FIRST AMENDMENT INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY v. DONALD J. TRUMP",
"caseUrl":"https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4637556/knight-first-amendment/",
"sourceUrl":"https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4637556/knight-first-amendment/",
"decisionDate":"2019-07-09",
"docketNumber":"18-1691-cv",
"citations":[{"cite":"928 F.3d 226"}],
"court":"ca2",
"courtName":"Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit",
"courtCitationString":"2d Cir.",
"jurisdictionType":"F",
"jurisdictionTypeName":"Federal",
"status":"Published",
"judge":"Parker, Hall, Droney",
"citeCount":88,
"opinionSnippet":"President Donald J. Trump appeals from a judgment concluding...",
"opinionDownloadUrls":["http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/..."],
"recordType":"case",
"scrapedAt":"2026-05-30T10:00:00+00:00"
}

Data Source

Data is sourced from CourtListener (courtlistener.com), operated by the Free Law Project. It is the largest free and open-source legal research platform, containing opinions from:

• US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) — opinions back to 1754
• All 13 US Circuit Courts of Appeals
• US District Courts
• State Supreme Courts and Appellate Courts
• Specialized federal courts (Tax Court, Bankruptcy, etc.)

Court IDs Reference

API Token

Register for a free CourtListener account at https://www.courtlistener.com/register/ to get an API token. The token provides:

• Higher rate limits (100+ requests/hour vs 100/day unauthenticated)
• Faster access to large result sets

FAQs

Q: Does this require an API key? No, the actor works without authentication. Providing a free API token increases rate limits.

Q: How do I get full case text? Full opinion text requires an API token and the case must be in CourtListener's database with full text indexed. The opinionSnippet field provides a preview. Use opinionDownloadUrls to access the full PDF.

Q: What date format should I use? Use YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g., 2000-01-15).

Q: What is a cluster ID? CourtListener groups related opinions (e.g., majority, dissent) into a "cluster." The clusterId is the unique identifier for a case cluster.

Q: Can I search using boolean operators? Yes. Use AND, OR, NOT in your search query. Example: "free speech" AND "first amendment" NOT obscenity

Q: What states are available? All US federal and state jurisdictions with published opinions on CourtListener.