| --- |
| license: cc0-1.0 |
| language: |
| - en |
| task_categories: |
| - text-retrieval |
| - tabular-classification |
| size_categories: |
| - 10M<n<100M |
| pretty_name: US Dockets (case metadata) |
| tags: |
| - legal |
| - law |
| - dockets |
| - us-courts |
| - pacer |
| - recap |
| - court-records |
| - public-domain |
| - legal-nlp |
| - legal-research |
| configs: |
| - config_name: all |
| data_files: data/*/*.jsonl.gz |
| default: true |
| - config_name: federal-district |
| data_files: data/federal-district/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: federal-appellate |
| data_files: data/federal-appellate/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: federal-bankruptcy |
| data_files: data/federal-bankruptcy/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: federal-special |
| data_files: data/federal-special/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: scotus |
| data_files: data/scotus/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: state |
| data_files: data/state/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: territorial |
| data_files: data/territorial/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: tribal |
| data_files: data/tribal/*.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: other |
| data_files: data/other/*.jsonl.gz |
| dataset_info: |
| - config_name: all |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: federal-district |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: federal-appellate |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: federal-bankruptcy |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: federal-special |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: scotus |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: state |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: territorial |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: tribal |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| - config_name: other |
| features: |
| - name: id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: doc_type |
| dtype: string |
| - name: jurisdiction |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court |
| dtype: string |
| - name: court_id |
| dtype: string |
| - name: tier |
| dtype: string |
| - name: title |
| dtype: string |
| - name: docket_number |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_filed |
| dtype: string |
| - name: date_terminated |
| dtype: string |
| - name: cause |
| dtype: string |
| - name: nature_of_suit |
| dtype: string |
| - name: assigned_to |
| dtype: string |
| - name: source |
| dtype: string |
| - name: license |
| dtype: string |
| - name: retrieved_at |
| dtype: string |
| - name: extra |
| dtype: string |
| --- |
| |
| # US Dockets — the case-level record |
|
|
| > **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. |
|
|
| **34,290,148 docket records** from 2,289 U.S. courts: the case, the court, the |
| number, the dates, the judge. This is the *index* of American litigation — what was filed, where, when |
| and by whom it was decided. |
|
|
| ## Source & credit — Free Law Project / CourtListener |
|
|
| Every docket in this dataset comes from the **Free Law Project / CourtListener bulk export of |
| 2026-06-30**. CourtListener gathered, cleaned, deduplicated and published that record; |
| [Free Law Project](https://free.law) — the 501(c)(3) non-profit behind it, building free public access |
| to American law since 2010 — pays for it. We reshaped and sharded; they did the hard part. |
| Go to the source: <https://www.courtlistener.com>. |
|
|
| **Free Law Project is a non-profit, and it is worth supporting: <https://free.law/donate/>.** |
| If this data is useful to you, credit Free Law Project and CourtListener too, and consider going |
| straight to the source: CourtListener runs its own |
| [API and MCP server](https://wiki.free.law/c/courtlistener/help/api). |
|
|
| ## What a docket row IS — and what it is NOT |
|
|
| **A docket row is metadata about a case.** Case name, court, docket number, filing date, termination |
| date, cause of action, nature of suit, assigned judge, and the CourtListener URL for the case. |
|
|
| **A docket row is NOT the filings.** There are no complaints, no motions, no briefs, no orders, no |
| exhibits, no opinions here. In the federal courts those documents live behind **PACER**, which charges |
| per page; the RECAP Archive at CourtListener holds the subset that users have paid for and donated. |
| **Nobody has them all** — not Free Law Project, not us, not any commercial vendor. Anyone who tells you |
| their corpus contains "all court filings" is describing something that does not exist. |
|
|
| **A docket is not a "case" in the sense a citation is.** One dispute can carry several dockets (trial, |
| appeal, consolidated, MDL member cases), and a docket can be opened and closed without producing a |
| single published decision. **Do not quote a docket count as a count of cases, of lawsuits, or of |
| decisions.** For decisions, use [`docketx/us-caselaw`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/docketx/us-caselaw). |
|
|
| **A docket row is not the whole docket sheet.** The chronological list of entries — "12/03 Motion to |
| dismiss filed" — is a separate CourtListener table and is not in this dataset. |
|
|
| ## Privacy — what we removed, and why |
|
|
| Docket metadata names private individuals. CourtListener carries a `blocked` flag on each docket, |
| which it sets when the record should be kept out of search-engine indexes; in this export the flag is |
| applied at scale to **consumer bankruptcy**, where the party is an ordinary person and the subject is |
| their insolvency. |
|
|
| **We excluded every `blocked` docket: 37,369,473 rows.** Publishing them here — in a |
| dataset that is indexed, bulk-downloadable and read by model trainers — would defeat exactly the |
| protection the source applied. They are not hidden: they remain in Free Law Project's own bulk export |
| and on CourtListener, for anyone with a reason to have them. |
|
|
| | tier | blocked rows excluded | |
| |---|--:| |
| | `federal-bankruptcy` | 36,838,967 | |
| | `federal-appellate` | 254,144 | |
| | `state` | 253,356 | |
| | `federal-special` | 15,838 | |
| | `federal-district` | 5,631 | |
| | `other` | 1,525 | |
| | `scotus` | 10 | |
| | `territorial` | 2 | |
|
|
| We checked every column of the source table for fields that should not be redistributed. **There are |
| no Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses or juvenile-matter markers in the schema**; the |
| only privacy control the source carries is the `blocked` flag described above, and we honoured it. We |
| also dropped CourtListener's internal operational columns (`view_count`, Internet Archive upload paths |
| and retry counters, index timestamps), which say nothing about the case. |
|
|
| ## Malformed rows at source |
|
|
| 18,026 rows of the source CSV carry an unescaped `"` inside a text field, which |
| shifts every following column — a party's mailing address lands in the docket-number column, and so on. |
| We detected these by an impossible `court_id` — values like `f`, `1988`, `0`, ` Inc.` — and **dropped |
| them rather than publish shifted values**. They are not in any config and not in this repo: because the |
| shift also scrambles the `blocked` column, we cannot tell which of them the source had marked private, |
| so they are excluded on that ground too. The check is reproducible from the source export: a row whose |
| `court_id` is absent from `courts-2026-06-30.csv.bz2` is one of these. |
|
|
| ## Composition — measured, per tier |
|
|
| | tier | config | dockets | courts | |
| |---|---|--:|--:| |
| | U.S. District Courts | `federal-district` | 23,795,525 | 124 | |
| | U.S. Courts of Appeals | `federal-appellate` | 1,341,708 | 112 | |
| | U.S. Bankruptcy Courts | `federal-bankruptcy` | 27,619 | 100 | |
| | Federal special courts (Claims, CIT, Tax, Vet. App., FISC …) | `federal-special` | 1,605,763 | 34 | |
| | Supreme Court of the United States | `scotus` | 589,547 | 1 | |
| | State courts (supreme, appellate, trial, special) | `state` | 6,841,279 | 1,843 | |
| | U.S. territories | `territorial` | 63,006 | 14 | |
| | Tribal courts | `tribal` | 2,138 | 42 | |
| | Military, international and committee dockets | `other` | 23,563 | 19 | |
| | **total** | `all` | **34,290,148** | **2,289** | |
|
|
| Every number on this page was counted from the files in `data/` — none is estimated, and none is taken |
| from any upstream total. Read from the source export: **71,677,647** rows. |
|
|
| The record is **federal-heavy**, and that is a property of the world, not of this dataset: PACER gives |
| CourtListener a machine-readable feed for every federal court, while most state trial courts publish |
| no bulk docket data at all. A state absent from a count is one with no open feed, not one withheld. |
|
|
| ## The viewer, and why two configs preview partially |
|
|
| Hugging Face converts each config to parquet up to a **5 GB in-memory ceiling**, measured here rather |
| than assumed: `federal-district` stopped at 5,001,023,741 bytes and `all` at 5,003,462,887. So in the |
| browser those two show a partial preview — `federal-district` previews 7,490,694 of its |
| 23,795,525 rows, `all` previews 7,596,221 of 34,290,148. |
|
|
| **Nothing is missing from the data.** `load_dataset` and a plain download read every shard; the cap |
| applies only to the browsable parquet preview. The other **eight configs convert completely**, and |
| every one of their converted row counts matches the count measured on our own files exactly: |
| `state` 6,841,279 · `federal-special` 1,605,763 · `federal-appellate` 1,341,708 · `scotus` 589,547 · |
| `territorial` 63,006 · `federal-bankruptcy` 27,619 · `other` 23,563 · `tribal` 2,138. |
|
|
| We kept the tier sharding rather than splitting the federal district courts further, because the |
| alternatives — by circuit, by state — are not in the source table (CourtListener gives every district |
| court the same `parent_court_id`, `usdistct`), and we do not add facts the source does not carry. |
| Files are held at about 100 MB each, 40 in total, which is the size the converter handles comfortably. |
|
|
| ## Format |
|
|
| Rows follow **docketx record v1**, one docket per line, **every column a string**: |
|
|
| `id`, `doc_type` (`docket`), `jurisdiction`, `court`, `court_id`, `tier`, `title`, `docket_number`, |
| `date_filed`, `date_terminated`, `cause`, `nature_of_suit`, `assigned_to`, `source`, `license`, |
| `retrieved_at`, `extra`. |
|
|
| `extra` is a JSON **string** — parse it with `json.loads` — carrying everything else the source |
| exposed: the case-name variants, `docket_number_core`, `pacer_case_id`, jury demand, MDL status, |
| appellate fee status, the cert/argument dates, the panel and referral strings, and the |
| CourtListener judge ids (`assigned_to_id`, `referred_to_id`) which join to |
| [`docketx/us-judges`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/docketx/us-judges). |
|
|
| `jurisdiction` is the two-letter state code for state courts and `us` for federal ones; use `court_id` |
| and `court` to narrow further (e.g. `nysd` = District Court, S.D. New York). |
|
|
| ## Load it |
|
|
| ```python |
| from datasets import load_dataset |
| |
| ds = load_dataset("docketx/us-dockets") # every tier |
| fd = load_dataset("docketx/us-dockets", "federal-district") # one tier |
| tx = ds["train"].filter(lambda r: r["jurisdiction"] == "tx") # one state |
| ``` |
|
|
| ## Provenance and license |
|
|
| U.S. court records are works of government and carry no copyright (*Banks v. Manchester*, 128 U.S. 244 |
| (1888); *Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org*, 590 U.S. 255 (2020)). This packaging is released under |
| CC0 1.0. Source: CourtListener bulk export of 2026-06-30, Free Law Project — https://free.law. This |
| dataset redistributes public-record metadata; it adds no annotation and asserts no rights. |
|
|
| Part of the [DocketX](https://docketx.ai) open legal corpus, alongside |
| `docketx/us-caselaw` (10.8M opinions), `docketx/us-judges`, `docketx/court-rules`, |
| `docketx/us-statutes` and `docketx/oral-arguments-us`. |
|
|
