OpenCaseLaw research CLI

ocl checks Swiss case citations against the open OpenCaseLaw corpus (over a million published decisions of the Federal Supreme Court and the cantonal courts, federal and cantonal statutes) and keeps the evidence behind a memo. Dependency-free Python 3.10+; JSON when piped, readable text at a terminal.

pipx install opencaselaw-cli        # or: uv tool install opencaselaw-cli

Windows installer. For machines without Python, each release ships OpenCaseLaw-CLI-<version>-setup.exe: the python.org runtime plus this package under Program Files\OpenCaseLaw, ocl.cmd, a "Send to" entry "Entwurf prüfen (offline)" and a Start-menu entry for ocl pack pull. Built by .github/workflows/installer-cli.yml from installer/; notes for court IT (allow-listing, mirrors, verification) in docs/court-it-install.md.

Two jobs

Check a draft as it is: ocl check memo.docx reads the Word file (footnotes included), finds the citations and the quotations next to them, checks every one, and writes memo.check.html next to the draft with what held and what needs attention.

Check a list of citations, written the way lawyers write them:

ocl citations resolve 'BGE 136 III 513 E. 2.3' 'BGer 4A_747/2012 vom 5. April 2013' \
    'Obergericht ZH LA210005 vom 15. Juni 2021' 'BGE 999 III 1'

Each reference comes back resolved, pinpoint_unavailable, discrepancy (the decision exists but the date or docket written next to it is wrong), missing, ambiguous or unrecognized, with the service's own citation strings and the verbatim text of the cited Erwägung. The rule behind it: the decision the service proposes must carry the label the author wrote; nothing is ever substituted, and no citation string is built by the client.

Check the quotations against the served text (exact, near with the differing spans, or not_found):

ocl quotes check 'BGE 136 III 513 E. 2.3' --quote "le contrat de travail conclu pour une durée indéterminée"

Keep the evidence behind a memo:

ocl bundle create 'Rachekündigung Art. 336 OR' --max-results 10 --passage 2 --law OR:336 --out evidence
ocl bundle verify evidence

A bundle folder holds the selected decisions (JSON and plain text), the named Erwägungen and statute articles, a plain-language INDEX.md, and a manifest.json with every request, timestamp, source link and SHA-256.

Also: ocl decisions search, ocl decisions get, ocl decisions passage, ocl laws get, ocl citations list, ocl cite. ocl <command> --help has examples for each.

For agents

ocl agent-guide prints the contract on one page: JSON when piped, exit codes that carry the verdict (0 resolved, 2 invalid input, 3 transport, 4 something did not resolve), --cache DIR for free repeats within a server generation, and the rules (citation strings and quotations only from the service). ocl tool list|schema|call reaches every research tool of the service with its structured output. Three skills ship in the package (citation-check, research, evidence-bundle): ocl skills install --claude copies them into Claude Code's skills directory, --dir anywhere else. opencaselaw_cli.api offers the same as a library. For confidential drafts, ocl pack pull fetches the weekly verification pack and ocl --local check memo.docx (or ocl --local ... for the other check commands; --pack PATH for a pack stored elsewhere) runs the citation, pinpoint and quotation checks on this machine only.

Scope

Existence, identity and wording only. The tool never says that a decision supports a proposition, is still good law, or fits the facts. Results come from a hosted corpus that is rebuilt nightly, not from an offline snapshot; keep the returned source links and pagination metadata with your work.

Guide: https://opencaselaw.ch/research-cli.md · Site: https://opencaselaw.ch/cli/ · Changelog: CHANGELOG.md. Commands contact https://mcp.opencaselaw.ch by default; --base-url accepts another origin. Defaults can live in ~/.config/ocl/config or OCL_* variables; ocl completion zsh|bash|fish prints a completion script. The client spaces requests by at least 200 ms, retries at most twice by default and respects Retry-After up to 30 seconds.