--- license: cc0-1.0 language: - en task_categories: - text-retrieval - text-generation size_categories: - 1M **Code & tools:** [github.com/docketx](https://github.com/docketx) — [legal-scrambler](https://github.com/docketx/legal-scrambler) pseudonymises a case file on your own hardware before a frontier model sees it; [claude-for-legal](https://github.com/docketx/claude-for-legal) is the Claude Code plugin (`docketx-open-law`) that loads these datasets and checks citations against them. **The American case-law record in one dataset** — published opinions from the Free Law Project / CourtListener bulk export of 2026-06-30: full text, all opinion types (majority, concurring, dissenting, per curiam, orders), one uniform row format across every jurisdiction. **10,797,772 opinions are live in this repo** across 50 states + DC, the Supreme Court, the federal appellate, district, bankruptcy and special courts, the U.S. territories, the tribal courts, and a catch-all of state trial courts, attorney-general opinions and specialty tribunals that no other series carries. Every number on this page was measured by counting the lines of the actual uploaded file; none is an estimate. ## Load it ```python from datasets import load_dataset ds = load_dataset("docketx/us-caselaw", split="train") # everything ds = load_dataset("docketx/us-caselaw", split="train", streaming=True) # 60 GB — stream it ``` One jurisdiction only? Each also stands alone as `docketx/us-caselaw-` (e.g. `docketx/us-caselaw-tx`), which is much cheaper than pulling the union. ## Row format Every row is **docketx record v1**. Every column is a string in every file: | field | meaning | |---|---| | `id` | stable docketx document id | | `doc_type` | `opinion` | | `jurisdiction` | jurisdiction code — the `` in `data//` | | `title` | case caption | | `text` | full opinion text | | `source` | origin of the record (CourtListener) | | `license` | `public-domain` | | `retrieved_at` | bulk-export date | | `citation` | reporter citation where the source has one | | `court` | court identifier | | `date` | date filed | | `extra` | `cl_opinion_id`, `cluster_id`, `opinion_type`, `text_kind`, `source_label` | The schema is declared in `dataset_info` above rather than inferred, and the `opinions` config lists its files explicitly. That is deliberate: a blind `data/*/*.jsonl.gz` glob previously pulled statute and court-rule files (which carry `rule_set`/`rule_number` and a differently-shaped `extra`) into the same config, so the parquet conversion inferred its schema from the first file, hit a column-name mismatch, and failed the whole dataset to 0 rows. Statutes and rules now live only in `docketx/us-statutes` and `docketx/court-rules`, where they belong. ## What is here — measured counts ### States and DC | jurisdiction | code | opinions | |---|---|---:| | Alabama | `al` | 166,537 | | Alaska | `ak` | 14,914 | | Arizona | `az` | 44,194 | | Arkansas | `ar` | 80,470 | | California | `ca` | 242,831 | | Colorado | `co` | 62,317 | | Connecticut | `ct` | 61,409 | | Delaware | `de` | 23,480 | | District of Columbia | `dc` | 26,001 | | Florida | `fl` | 447,040 | | Georgia | `ga` | 230,300 | | Hawaii | `hi` | 35,879 | | Idaho | `id` | 35,820 | | Illinois | `il` | 249,250 | | Indiana | `in` | 136,110 | | Iowa | `ia` | 83,272 | | Kansas | `ks` | 69,413 | | Kentucky | `ky` | 92,146 | | Louisiana | `la` | 367,729 | | Maine | `me` | 31,116 | | Maryland | `md` | 53,833 | | Massachusetts | `ma` | 90,879 | | Michigan | `mi` | 159,686 | | Minnesota | `mn` | 71,487 | | Mississippi | `ms` | 76,841 | | Missouri | `mo` | 161,325 | | Montana | `mt` | 64,117 | | Nebraska | `ne` | 51,154 | | Nevada | `nv` | 36,992 | | New Hampshire | `nh` | 22,351 | | New Jersey | `nj` | 142,776 | | New Mexico | `nm` | 35,069 | | New York | `ny` | 963,045 | | North Carolina | `nc` | 148,915 | | North Dakota | `nd` | 27,900 | | Ohio | `oh` | 270,910 | | Oklahoma | `ok` | 81,558 | | Oregon | `or` | 86,341 | | Pennsylvania | `pa` | 347,902 | | Rhode Island | `ri` | 26,773 | | South Carolina | `sc` | 62,793 | | South Dakota | `sd` | 25,593 | | Tennessee | `tn` | 92,508 | | Texas | `tx` | 662,717 | | Utah | `ut` | 34,886 | | Vermont | `vt` | 27,714 | | Virginia | `va` | 54,048 | | Washington | `wa` | 150,239 | | West Virginia | `wv` | 39,546 | | Wisconsin | `wi` | 72,350 | | Wyoming | `wy` | 16,358 | | **51 jurisdictions** | | **6,658,834** | ### Federal, territorial, tribal and catch-all | tier | code | opinions | state | |---|---|---:|---| | Supreme Court of the United States | `scotus` | 521,825 | complete | | Federal bankruptcy courts | `fed-bankruptcy` | 79,523 | complete | | Federal special courts | `fed-special` | 280,860 | complete | | U.S. territories | `territories` | 67,210 | complete | | Tribal courts | `tribal` | 2,205 | complete | | Federal appellate (all circuits) | `fed-appellate` | 1,510,937 | complete | | Federal district courts | `fed-district` | 1,199,105 | complete | | State trial courts, AG opinions, specialty tribunals (1,612 court ids) | `extras` | 477,273 | complete | **Every count on this page was measured on 2026-09-17** by decompressing each file the `opinions` config loads and counting its lines. Every state's loaded data is byte-identical to its standalone `docketx/us-caselaw-` dataset (same SHA-256; Texas as three parts holding the same 662,717 rows), and each of those counts matched its publish manifest exactly. Total: **10,797,772 opinions**. The bulk export holds 10,798,347 opinions. The `extras` slice (added 2026-09-17, 477,273 rows, 0 duplicate ids, slice sha256 `9123f2d3cdff3c48…`) carries the 1,612 state courts that no per-jurisdiction plan included (477,294 opinions; 21 of them have empty text). It includes 67,524 attorney-general opinion reports from 16 states, which are official opinions but not court decisions. To exclude them, drop rows whose `court` is `extras-` followed by one of: `texag`, `oklaag`, `arkag`, `laag`, `flaag`, `nyag`, `nebag`, `moag`, `wisag`, `calag`, `kanag`, `coloag`, `mdag`, `washag`, `minnag`, `paag`. (Do not filter on a trailing `ag`: Ohio's Portage County courts and an Onondaga County court also end that way.) 575 opinions are in no file, each for a known reason: 533 in planned courts and 21 in `extras` have empty text, and 21 have a cluster or docket missing from the bulk export itself. ### Superseded files still on disk Until 2026-09-17 this page's config loaded an older, smaller slice for 44 jurisdictions (the page then served 9,095,360 of 10,320,499; Florida loaded 259,051 of 447,040, California 227,809 of 242,831). The config now loads the complete `opinions-2026-06-30.v1.jsonl.gz` for those 44. The older files are no longer part of any config and are kept only until they are removed in a cleanup commit. ## Coverage honesty The open record is appellate-heavy. Most US **trial-court** rulings are published nowhere at all — no database has them, including this one. What is here is the published record. ## Provenance and license Judicial opinions are edicts of government and carry no copyright (*Banks v. Manchester*, 128 U.S. 244 (1888); *Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org*, 590 U.S. 255 (2020)). Packaging is CC0 1.0. Source: CourtListener bulk export of 2026-06-30, Free Law Project — https://free.law. Built by [DocketX](https://docketx.ai) — the same corpus powers the verified legal API at [docketrouter.ai](https://docketrouter.ai).