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README.md

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+---
+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
+
+**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` and **dropped them rather than publish shifted values**.
+A sample is kept out of the configs for anyone wanting to reproduce the check.
+
+## 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.
+
+## 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`.