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.). Free Law Project hosts it at mcp.courtlistener.com. (Coming Soon.) See MCP_README.md for connection details and for running it locally.

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.results:
    print(opinion)

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

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

Available Endpoints

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

Endpoint	Description
search	Search opinions, RECAP, judges, and oral arguments
dockets	Court dockets
docket_entries	Docket entries
recap_documents	RECAP documents
opinions	Court opinions
opinions_cited	Citation relationships
clusters	Opinion clusters
courts	Court information
audio	Oral argument audio
people	Judges and other persons
positions	Judge positions
parties	Case parties
attorneys	Attorneys
financial_disclosures	Financial disclosures
alerts	User alerts
docket_alerts	Docket alerts
tags	User-created tags
visualizations	Visualization data
schools	Schools
educations	Judge education records
political_affiliations	Political affiliations
aba_ratings	ABA ratings
fjc_integrated_database	FJC integrated database

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