| --- |
| license: cc0-1.0 |
| language: [en] |
| task_categories: [text-retrieval, tabular-classification] |
| tags: [legal, law, judges, judiciary, us-courts, public-domain, judicial-analytics] |
| pretty_name: US Judges (CourtListener people database) |
| configs: |
| - config_name: judges |
| data_files: data/judges/judges.jsonl.gz |
| default: true |
| - config_name: positions |
| data_files: data/positions/positions.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: educations |
| data_files: data/educations/educations.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: schools |
| data_files: data/schools/schools.jsonl.gz |
| - config_name: political_affiliations |
| data_files: data/political_affiliations/political_affiliations.jsonl.gz |
| --- |
| |
| # US Judges — the CourtListener people database |
|
|
| > **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. |
|
|
| ## Source & credit — Free Law Project / CourtListener |
|
|
| This dataset is the **CourtListener people database**, taken from the Free Law Project / |
| CourtListener bulk export of **2026-06-30**. CourtListener researched, assembled and maintains these |
| judge records; [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 reformatted; 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). |
|
|
| Structured records of U.S. judges: who they are, every judicial position they have held, where they |
| studied, and their political affiliations. From the Free Law Project / CourtListener bulk export of |
| **2026-06-30**, public domain. |
|
|
| | config | rows | |
| |---|---:| |
| | `judges` | 16,191 | |
| | `positions` | 51,291 | |
| | `educations` | 12,777 | |
| | `schools` | 6,011 | |
| | `political_affiliations` | 8,486 | |
| | `retention_events` | 0 — empty at source, so it is not offered as a loadable config | |
|
|
| Join `positions` to `judges` on the person id to trace a judge's career across courts. Coverage is |
| strongest for federal judges and state appellate judges; many state trial judges are not in this |
| database, and for those the opinions themselves (see `docketx/us-caselaw`) name the presiding judge. |
|
|
| ## Load it |
| ```python |
| from datasets import load_dataset |
| judges = load_dataset("docketx/us-judges", "judges") |
| positions = load_dataset("docketx/us-judges", "positions") |
| ``` |
|
|
| Part of the [DocketX](https://docketx.ai) open legal corpus, alongside `docketx/us-caselaw` |
| (the national opinion corpus) and `docketx/oral-arguments-us` (argument transcripts). |
|
|
