---
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).