CourtListener API Client

A Python client for the CourtListener API, providing access to millions of legal opinions, dockets, judges, and more from Free Law Project.

Using an LLM? This repo also ships the CourtListener MCP server, which exposes the API to any Model Context Protocol client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.). See MCP_README.md for connection details and for running it locally. Free Law Project hosts it at mcp.courtlistener.com. See the MCP documentation on the wiki for setup instructions.

Installation

pip install courtlistener-api-client

Authentication

You'll need a CourtListener API token. You can get one by creating an account and generating a token in your profile settings.

Set it as an environment variable:

export COURTLISTENER_API_TOKEN="your-token-here"

Or pass it directly to the client:

from courtlistener import CourtListener

client = CourtListener(api_token="your-token-here")

Quickstart

from courtlistener import CourtListener

client = CourtListener()

# Get a specific opinion by ID
opinion = client.opinions.get(1)

# Search for opinions
response = client.opinions.list(cluster__case_name="Miranda")

# Access results from the current page
for opinion in response.get_results():
    print(opinion)

# Check the total count of matching results
print(response.get_count())

# Iterate through all results across pages
response = client.dockets.list(court="scotus")
for docket in response:
    print(docket)

Pagination

List queries return a ResourceIterator that handles pagination automatically:

results = client.dockets.list(court="scotus")

# Iterate through all results across all pages
for docket in results:
    print(docket)

# Or navigate pages manually
results = client.dockets.list(court="scotus")
print(results.get_results())   # current page results

if results.has_next():
    results.next()
    print(results.get_results())  # next page results

Available Endpoints

Access any endpoint as an attribute on the client. Each endpoint supports .get(id) and .list(**filters).

See the CourtListener API docs for the full list and available filters.

Async

AsyncCourtListener mirrors CourtListener method for method. Anything that makes a request is awaited, iteration uses async for, and the client is an async context manager.

from courtlistener import AsyncCourtListener

async with AsyncCourtListener() as client:
    opinion = await client.opinions.get(1)

    results = client.dockets.list(court="scotus")
    async for docket in results:
        print(docket)