CourtListener
A free, public database of U.S. court opinions, federal court filings, judges, and oral arguments, maintained by Free Law Project. In operation since 2010.
Description
CourtListener is a website and queryable database holding millions of U.S. court opinions, federal court dockets (from PACER, via the RECAP Archive), profiles of state and federal judges, financial disclosure documents, and audio recordings of oral arguments. It is free to use, with no login required for most searches.
Free Law Project (FLP) is the nonprofit that builds and operates it.
CourtListener is used by attorneys, legal aid programs, researchers, journalists, students, and software developers. Many other legal tools and websites pull data from it through its public API.
What it does
The site supports several distinct functions:
Opinion search. Search across federal and state appellate court opinions by keyword, citation, judge, date, or court. Results include the full text of the opinion.
Docket search. Search across federal court dockets (the filings, motions, orders, and other documents that make up a case file). Documents come from PACER via the RECAP project.
Judge profiles. Look up federal and state judges by name, court, or appointment history. Includes biographical information, financial disclosures, and decisions authored.
Oral argument audio. Listen to or download oral arguments from federal appellate courts and the Supreme Court.
Citation lookup. Find an opinion by its citation (e.g., 410 U.S. 113) and pull the full text.
Alerts. Subscribe to email notifications when new filings appear in a case, when a particular term shows up in a new opinion, or when a judge issues new decisions.
Public API. Other tools and websites can query the database programmatically. The API is also free, with reasonable rate limits.
What it does not do
It does not include all state court opinions. Coverage varies by jurisdiction. Some state appellate courts are well covered, others less so. State trial-court rulings are generally not included.
It does not include state court dockets at scale. The PACER-based RECAP work covers federal courts.
It does not include secondary sources (treatises, law review articles, practice guides). Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg Law remain the commercial alternatives for that material.
It does not include legal analysis or commentary. The site presents primary sources; interpretation is the user's responsibility.