germanlegaltexts 0.4.0

A package which implements functionality to download and parse german legal texts.

GermanLegalTexts

A Python package for downloading, parsing, and working with German legal texts and court judgements from official German government sources.

Description

GermanLegalTexts provides tools to programmatically access and work with German legal texts and court judgements. It allows you to:

• Law Books (Gesetzbücher): Download and parse legal codes from Gesetze im Internet

  • Download individual law books by URL
  • Download all available German legal texts (sync or async)
  • Access specific paragraphs, sections, and other elements

• Court Judgements (Rechtsprechung): Download and parse court decisions from Rechtsprechung im Internet

  • Download individual judgements
  • Browse and filter the judgement index
  • Download the first n judgements or all available judgements (sync or async)
  • Access structured judgement data (facts, reasoning, decision)

Both downloaders support an async API built on httpx that streams results as they complete, with configurable rate limiting.

Installation

Requires Python 3.12 or higher.

pip install germanlegaltexts

Usage

Law Books (Gesetzbücher)

from germanlegaltexts.GermanLawDownloader import GermanLawDownloader

downloader = GermanLawDownloader()

# Download a single law book
bgb = downloader.download_law_book("https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/xml.zip")

paragraph = bgb.get_paragraph("§ 242")
if paragraph:
    print(paragraph.metadaten.titel)
    print(paragraph.textdaten.text.content.text)

Court Judgements (Rechtsprechung)

from germanlegaltexts.GermanJudgementDownloader import GermanJudgementDownloader

downloader = GermanJudgementDownloader()

# Download the first 10 judgements
for judgement in downloader.download_first_n_judgements(10):
    print(f"{judgement.aktenzeichen} — {judgement.doktyp}")

Async batch downloads

Both downloaders expose async generator methods that start downloads in parallel and yield results as they arrive, with a configurable rate limit (default: 1 new request per second).

import asyncio
from germanlegaltexts.GermanLawDownloader import GermanLawDownloader
from germanlegaltexts.GermanJudgementDownloader import GermanJudgementDownloader

async def main():
    # Stream all law books — start 2 new downloads per second
    law_downloader = GermanLawDownloader()
    async for book in law_downloader.iter_all_law_books(max_per_second=2.0):
        print(book.norms[0].metadaten.jurabk)

    # Stream the first 100 judgements with no throttle
    judgement_downloader = GermanJudgementDownloader()
    async for judgement in judgement_downloader.iter_first_n_judgements(100, max_per_second=None):
        print(f"{judgement.aktenzeichen} — {judgement.gertyp}")

asyncio.run(main())

Set max_per_second=None to start all downloads immediately without any rate limiting.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Data source: Gesetze im Internet
• Data source: Rechtsprechung im Internet
• Author: Malte Weber