Court Decisions MCP + API

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👁 European Court Decisions API + MCP server — case law from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and the EU

German & European court decisions API + MCP server — search case law from BGH, OGH, CJEU and Dutch courts in one normalized JSON schema. No API key, no scraping.

What is Court Decisions MCP + API?

This Actor gives you programmatic access to court decisions from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, the EU — from official open data APIs, across four jurisdictions.

* NL does not support server-side full-text search. Searches return a date-filtered, keyword-ranked candidate window; results carry a warnings[] entry: "window-bounded, not full-text". Full decision text is available for a subset of NL decisions.

Use it three ways: as a REST API for direct HTTP access, as an MCP Server for AI agents (Claude Desktop, Cursor), or as a standard Apify Actor to search, filter, and export case law in structured JSON.

No API key required. No scraping. Official public API access. One unified schema across all sources.

🚀 Get Started in a Few Minutes

Option A: MCP Server — Add this to your MCP client config (e.g., claude_desktop_config.json):

{
"mcpServers":{
"court-decisions":{
"url":"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/mcp"
}
}
}

Then ask your AI agent: "Find recent BGH decisions about data privacy", "Search Austrian OGH rulings on tenant law", "Search Dutch Rechtspraak decisions on contract law", or "Find CJEU judgments on consumer protection"

Option B: REST API — Call the endpoints directly from any HTTP client:

# Search decisions (Germany)
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/search?query=Datenschutz&source=de"
# Search across all four jurisdictions
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/search?query=data+privacy&scope=all"
# Search Netherlands (window-bounded — not full-text)
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/search?query=huurrecht&source=nl"
# Get a specific decision by ECLI
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/decisions/ECLI:DE:BGH:2024:120324UVIZR234.23.0"
# List available courts
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/courts?jurisdiction=DE"

Option C: Apify Actor — Click Try for free above. No credit card required.

1. Choose an action: Search, Get by ECLI, or List Courts
2. Configure your parameters (optionally filter by source: de, at, nl, or eu)
3. Run and download results from the Dataset tab (JSON, CSV, Excel)

🔍 What Can This Actor Do?

REST API

• 3 JSON endpoints: /api/search, /api/decisions/{ecli}, /api/courts
• Standard HTTP GET requests — works with curl, Python requests, any HTTP client
• Interactive API documentation in the Standby tab (OpenAPI 3.0)
• No special client library needed

MCP Server for AI Agents

• Connect to Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client
• 3 structured tools: search_decisions, get_decision_by_ecli, list_courts
• AI-optimized response format with prioritized fields
• The only MCP server for European case law on Apify

Multi-Source Search

• Search across four jurisdictions (DE, AT, NL, EU) in a single query — or filter by source
• Retrieve individual decisions by ECLI identifier (automatic routing by jurisdiction)
• Filter by court, date range, and source
• Results ranked by relevance (BM25 + Reciprocal Rank Fusion) by default; switch to chronological with sort=date. Ranking operates per source — the response is grouped by source (jurisdictions[], each with its own ranked items), never blended into a single cross-country ranking. Across countries the groups themselves are ordered language-neutrally by their newest decision (date descending)
• Fan out explicitly with scope=all, or pick a subset with jurisdictions=[…]
• Paginated results with configurable page size

Structured Output

• Normalized ECLI-based data model — consistent across all sources
• Full decision text, headnotes, guiding principles (Leitsätze), operative part (Tenor)
• Court metadata, file numbers, keywords
• Every result includes a source field identifying the data origin
• Export as JSON, CSV, or Excel via Apify Dataset

Reliability

• Built-in caching (7-day TTL) for faster repeated access
• Automatic retry with progressive backoff per source
• Source-specific rate limit compliance (transparent throttling)
• Partial failure handling: if one source is down, results from other sources are still returned
• Clear warnings when a source is temporarily unavailable

👥 Who Is This For?

AI Agent Developers — Give your legal AI agent direct access to case law across jurisdictions. Use the MCP Server to let Claude, GPT, or custom agents search and cite court decisions in real time. Build RAG pipelines for legal research, compliance monitoring, or document analysis.

Legal-Tech Startups — Build legal research tools, compliance checks, or case law databases on top of structured, normalized data covering the DACH region. Use the REST API for direct integration — no special client library required. Pay-per-use pricing instead of expensive subscriptions.

Legal Researchers — Run systematic searches across courts in multiple countries. Export datasets for empirical legal studies, comparative law research, citation analysis, or NLP projects.

Compliance Officers — Monitor new court decisions relevant to your regulatory domain across all four jurisdictions (DE, AT, NL, EU). Example: Track GDPR rulings from BGH and OGH by searching for "Datenschutz".

🔌 How Do I Connect as MCP Server?

Add this to your MCP client configuration:

{
"mcpServers":{
"court-decisions":{
"url":"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/mcp"
}
}
}

Example Prompts

Try these with your AI agent:

• "Find recent BGH decisions about data privacy (Datenschutz)" → Agent calls search_decisions with query "Datenschutz" and court filter "BGH"

• "Search Austrian OGH rulings on tenant law from 2024" → Agent calls search_decisions with query "Mietrecht", source "at", dateFrom "2024-01-01"

• "Show me the full text of ECLI:DE:BGH:2024:120324UVIZR234.23.0" → Agent calls get_decision_by_ecli — automatically routes to NeuRIS based on the ECLI country code

• "Search Dutch Rechtspraak decisions on contract law (huurrecht)" → Agent calls search_decisions with query "huurrecht", source "nl" (window-bounded result)

• "Find CJEU judgments on consumer protection from 2024" → Agent calls search_decisions with query "consumer protection", source "eu", dateFrom "2024-01-01"

• "Show me the full text of ECLI:EU:C:2024:123" → Agent calls get_decision_by_ecli — automatically routes to EUR-Lex based on the ECLI country code

• "Compare how German, Austrian, and EU courts handle data protection claims" → Agent searches all four sources, retrieves decisions from BGH, OGH, Dutch courts, and CJEU, synthesizes findings

• "Which courts are available?" → Agent calls list_courts and returns courts from all jurisdictions with source attribution

MCP Tool Reference

The MCP server exposes these 3 tools:

search_decisions

Search court decisions by keyword. Covers German federal courts (NeuRIS), Austrian courts (RIS), Dutch courts (Rechtspraak), and EU courts including CJEU and General Court (EUR-Lex). NL searches are window-bounded, not full-text — results carry a warnings[] label accordingly.

Selection precedence (highest first): jurisdictions → scope → source → default (fan-out across all sources). On the multi-country path, relevance applies within each jurisdiction; jurisdictions are ordered by their newest decision (date descending), never blended across countries.

Returns: SearchResult

Each JurisdictionGroup contains a source (e.g. de, at, eu), an items array (ranked by relevance or date-sorted within that group only), and an optional per-block warnings array. Sources without server-side full-text search return a candidate-window-bounded result, labelled window-bounded, not full-text; their order is deterministic per (query, window) — independent of the window position, so an identical query yields a byte-identical Top-10. (The German, Austrian, and EU sources are full-text and carry no such label.)

Each CourtDecisionSummary contains: ecli, source, court (name + abbreviation), date, fileNumber, decisionType, and optional headline and guidingPrinciple.

get_decision_by_ecli

Retrieve a single court decision by its ECLI identifier. Supports German (ECLI:DE:...), Austrian (ECLI:AT:...), Dutch (ECLI:NL:...), and EU (ECLI:EU:...) decisions.

Returns: CourtDecision

Additional optional fields: sourceId, fileNumbers, judicialBody, decisionName, keywords, language, headline, headnote, caseFacts, dissentingOpinion, outline, sourceUrl.

list_courts

List available courts with decision counts. Includes German federal courts (NeuRIS), Austrian courts (RIS), Dutch courts (Rechtspraak), and EU courts (EUR-Lex: CJEU, General Court).

Returns: Court[]

🌐 How Do I Use the REST API?

The REST API is available when the Actor runs in Standby mode. Three endpoints return JSON:

Endpoints

Search Parameters

Selection precedence (highest first): jurisdictions → scope → source → default (all sources). On the multi-country path, relevance applies within each jurisdiction; jurisdictions are ordered by their newest decision (date descending), never blended across countries.

Examples

# Search German BGH decisions about data privacy
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/search?query=Datenschutz&court=BGH"
# Get a decision by ECLI (automatic source routing)
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/decisions/ECLI:DE:BGH:2024:120324UVIZR234.23.0"
# List Austrian courts
curl"https://<your-username>--court-decisions.apify.actor/api/courts?jurisdiction=AT"

Browse the interactive API documentation in the Standby tab above — it shows all endpoints, parameters, and response schemas.

▶️ How Do I Run as Apify Actor?

1. Click Try for free on this page — no credit card required
2. Choose an action: Search, Get by ECLI, or List Courts
3. Configure your parameters (see Input Parameters below)
4. Run the Actor
5. Download results from the Dataset tab (JSON, CSV, Excel)

Input Parameters

Input Example

{
"action":"search",
"query":"Datenschutz",
"source":"de",
"dateFrom":"2024-01-01",
"limit":50
}

📋 What Data Can I Extract?

Each court decision includes the following fields — consistent across all sources:

Output Example (Germany)

{
"ecli":"ECLI:DE:BGH:2024:120324UVIZR234.23.0",
"sourceId":"KARE600050824",
"source":"de",
"court":{"name":"Bundesgerichtshof","abbreviation":"BGH"},
"date":"2024-03-12",
"fileNumber":"VI ZR 234/23",
"decisionType":"Urteil",
"headline":"Zum Anspruch auf immateriellen Schadensersatz ...",
"guidingPrinciple":"Ein Verstoß gegen die DSGVO ...",
"tenor":"Die Revision des Klägers wird zurückgewiesen ...",
"grounds":"I. Der Kläger nimmt die Beklagte auf Zahlung ...",
"keywords":["Datenschutz","DSGVO","Schadensersatz"],
"retrievedAt":"2026-04-06T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Output Example (Austria)

{
"ecli":"ECLI:AT:OGH0002:2024:0010OB00045.24Z.0319.000",
"sourceId":"JJT_20240319_OGH0002_0010OB00045_24Z0000_000",
"source":"at",
"court":{"name":"Oberster Gerichtshof","abbreviation":"OGH"},
"date":"2024-03-19",
"fileNumber":"1 Ob 45/24z",
"decisionType":"Beschluss",
"headline":"Mietrecht — Kündigung ...",
"grounds":"Der Revisionsrekurs ist zulässig ...",
"keywords":["Mietrecht","Kündigung"],
"retrievedAt":"2026-04-06T10:31:00.000Z"
}

🏛️ Which Courts Are Covered?

🇩🇪 Germany — 7 Federal Courts (via NeuRIS)

🇦🇹 Austria — 5 Supreme/Federal Courts (via RIS OGD)

🇳🇱 Netherlands — Dutch Courts (via Rechtspraak / Raad voor de rechtspraak)

ECLI-native corpus; Public Domain (PDM/CC0) licence — commercial reuse permitted. Search is window-bounded (date-filtered + keyword-ranked candidate set), not full-text. Full decision body available for a subset of decisions. Results carry warnings[]: "window-bounded, not full-text".

🇪🇺 EU — 2 Courts (via EUR-Lex/CELLAR)

🔜 Roadmap

• Switzerland — On the waitlist (no official API available yet).

💰 Pricing

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing. A search returns its first 3 results free on every run — you pay $0.01 per result item only beyond that, with no subscription and no minimum commitment.

Pricing

A search returning 10 results costs $0.07 (3 free + 7 × $0.01). A direct ECLI lookup costs $0.01. No matches = no charge.

Typical Monthly Cost

Free Tier

Every search returns the first 3 matching results for free — even on the Free plan and even after a run's spending limit is reached. You always see real output before deciding to pay, and runs never come back silently empty (a budget-gated or no-match run returns a short note explaining what to do). A direct ECLI lookup is a single paid result ($0.01); when it can't be charged you get a clear payment-required note, never an empty result. To receive more than the first 3 search results, make sure the run has available budget (Apify credit / a paid plan with a payment method, or a raised spending limit).

No results, minimal cost: If a search returns no matches, no result events are charged and the run returns a short note with tips to refine the query (German legal terms are indexed with umlauts, e.g. Kündigungsschutz).

No overbilling, no unpaid results: Beyond the free 3, you are charged only for the result items actually returned. If your spending limit is reached mid-search, you receive the free 3 plus exactly the results that fit your remaining budget — flagged with a note row — and pay only for those.

For exact pricing details, see the Pricing tab above.

✅ Data Sources & Legality

This Actor accesses official government open data APIs only:

• No authentication or API key required for any source
• No personal data is collected or processed
• Court decisions are public documents by law
• Data is accessed via official public APIs — not by scraping
• Compliant with GDPR and open data principles
• RIS OGD data used under CC BY 4.0 — attribution: Bundeskanzleramt, Rechtsinformationssystem
• Rechtspraak data in Public Domain (PDM/CC0) — commercial reuse permitted
• EUR-Lex data used under EU Open Data licence

⚠️ Limitations

• Supreme/federal courts only (DE, AT, EU). State court decisions are not available for Germany, Austria, and the EU sources.
• NL: no server-side full-text search. The Netherlands source returns a date-filtered, keyword-ranked candidate window — not a full-corpus relevance search. Results are labelled "window-bounded, not full-text" in warnings[].
• NL: partial full text. Full decision body is available for a subset of the Dutch corpus, not all ECLIs.
• Search result cap (Germany). The NeuRIS API returns a maximum of 10,000 results per query. Use specific filters to narrow results. For individual decisions, use the ECLI lookup — no cap.
• NeuRIS in test phase. The German source has been in public test phase since April 2025. Occasional instability is possible. The Actor includes automatic retry with progressive backoff.
• Partial failure handling. If one source is temporarily unavailable, results from other sources are still returned. A warnings field indicates which source had issues.
• Content language. DE/AT decisions are in German; NL decisions in Dutch. Metadata field names are in English for ease of integration.

🇩🇪🇦🇹🇪🇺🇳🇱 Für deutschsprachige Nutzer

Dieser Actor bietet programmatischen Zugang zu Gerichtsentscheidungen aus Deutschland, Österreich, den Niederlanden und der EU über offizielle Open-Data-APIs (NeuRIS, RIS OGD, Rechtspraak, EUR-Lex/CELLAR).

Nur deutsche Bundesgerichte? Für ein rein nationales DE-Listing (REST-API und Apify-Run, ohne MCP-Server) siehe Deutsche Gerichtsentscheidungen API.

Abgedeckte Jurisdiktionen:

• 🇩🇪 BGH, BVerfG, BVerwG, BFH, BAG, BSG, BPatG (7 Bundesgerichte) — Volltextsuche
• 🇦🇹 OGH, VwGH, VfGH, BVwG, BFG (5 Höchstgerichte) — Volltextsuche
• 🇳🇱 Niederländische Gerichte via Rechtspraak (Open Data, Public Domain/CC0) — fensterbasierte Suche, kein Volltext
• 🇪🇺 EuGH, EuG (2 EU-Gerichte) — Volltextsuche

Hinweis NL: Niederländische Quellen unterstützen keine serverseitige Volltextsuche. Ergebnisse sind auf ein datums-gefiltertes, keyword-gewichtetes Kandidatenfenster beschränkt und im warnings[]-Feld entsprechend markiert.

Drei Nutzungswege:

1. REST-API — Direkt per HTTP abrufbar (/api/search, /api/decisions/{ecli}, /api/courts). Funktioniert mit jedem HTTP-Client. Interaktive API-Dokumentation im Standby-Tab.

2. MCP-Server — Direkt in Claude Desktop, Cursor oder andere AI-Agents einbinden. Ihr Agent kann Entscheidungen aus allen vier Jurisdiktionen suchen, abrufen und zitieren. Einrichtung in wenigen Minuten.

3. Apify Actor — Suchparameter eingeben, optional nach Quelle filtern (de, at, nl, eu), Ergebnisse als Dataset (JSON/CSV/Excel) herunterladen.

Kostenlos testen — Apify bietet Startguthaben für neue Accounts. Keine Kreditkarte erforderlich.

Alle Daten stammen aus offiziellen öffentlichen APIs. Es werden keine personenbezogenen Daten verarbeitet. Gerichtsentscheidungen sind öffentliche Dokumente. RIS-OGD-Daten unter CC BY 4.0 (Bundeskanzleramt, Rechtsinformationssystem). Rechtspraak-Daten Public Domain (PDM/CC0). EUR-Lex-Daten unter EU Open Data Lizenz.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key or any scraping setup? No. The Actor calls official open-data APIs (NeuRIS, RIS OGD, Rechtspraak, EUR-Lex/CELLAR) on your behalf. No court login, no API key, no proxy, no scraping — you just provide a search query.

Which jurisdictions and courts are covered? Germany (BGH, BVerfG, BVerwG, BFH, BAG, BSG, BPatG — 7 federal courts), Austria (OGH, VwGH, VfGH, BVwG, BFG — 5 supreme courts), the Netherlands (Rechtspraak), and the EU (Court of Justice and General Court). Filter by source with de, at, nl, eu.

Do I get the full decision text? For DE, AT and EU sources you get full text plus headnotes, guiding principles (Leitsätze) and the operative part. For the Netherlands, full body is available for a subset of the corpus; the rest returns rich metadata.

Why do I get few or no results for a German query? Search with umlauts — use Kündigungsschutz, not Kuendigungsschutz. The German source matches the original spelling. Also try fewer or broader keywords, and widen the date range.

Can I use this with Claude, Cursor or another AI agent? Yes. The Actor runs as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in Standby mode, so Claude Desktop, Cursor and other MCP clients can search, fetch and cite decisions directly. A REST API and a one-off Apify run are also available.

What does it cost? Pay-per-event: the first 3 results of every search are free, then $0.01 per additional result and $0.01 per ECLI lookup. No subscription — you only pay for what you retrieve.

What output formats are supported? Results land in a normalized JSON schema and can be exported from the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel. The MCP and REST interfaces return JSON.

Is this legal / GDPR-compliant? All data comes from official public APIs; court decisions are public documents. No personal data is processed beyond what the courts themselves publish. Licenses: RIS OGD under CC BY 4.0, Rechtspraak Public Domain (PDM/CC0), EUR-Lex under the EU Open Data license.

💬 Feedback & Support

Found a bug or have a feature request? Use the Issues tab on this Actor's page, or reach out via the Apify community. A ⭐ rating or a short note directly helps prioritize new jurisdictions and features.