Courtlistener MCP Server

Retrieve the citation network for an opinion cluster. Supports two directions: "cited_by" (opinions that cite this one — measures precedential influence) and "citing" (opinions this one cites — reveals the authority chain relied on). This is the primary tool for tracing legal precedent chains. Note: the free tier supports shallow traversal — following 1–2 hops of a single case is practical; deep multi-hop analysis burns through the daily budget quickly.

Fetch docket metadata and one entries page by docket ID. Omit document_ids for the docket listing, or select RECAP document IDs embedded on entries_page to retrieve their extracted text without further upstream requests. Selected text uses bounded full/outline/page responses; continue retrieval.next_cursor as cursor with the same docket_id, entries_page and document_ids. Top-level next_cursor remains entries pagination. File availability and extracted-text status are independent. Obtain docket IDs from courtlistener_search_dockets or opinion results.

Fetch a judicial financial disclosure by disclosure_id from courtlistener_search_financial_disclosures. Returns metadata, counts and typed line items with coded values decoded to dollar ranges. Select categories or omit for all. Oversized selections return outline then page responses; continue retrieval.next_cursor as cursor with the unchanged ID/categories selection until null. Large individual row fields remain recoverable through text_chunks.

Fetch full biographical profile for a single judge: positions on record — judicial appointments across all courts plus non-judicial roles — education, political affiliations, and ABA ratings. The position list is paginated upstream and walked under a page bound; the response reports whether it was truncated. Obtain person IDs from courtlistener_search_judges results.

Fetch text and metadata for an opinion cluster by cluster ID. Returns majority, concurrence and dissent variants with raw HTML and readable plain text, variants_completion for source coverage, and docket_enrichment. Oversized selections return outline then page responses; continue retrieval.next_cursor as cursor with the unchanged ID/sections selection until null. Oversized docket backfill has independent enrichment_retrieval coordinates; continue its next_cursor as enrichment_cursor and discard prior enrichment slices when source_id changes. Obtain cluster IDs from courtlistener_search_opinions, courtlistener_lookup_citation, or docket results.

Fetch an oral argument recording by audio_id from courtlistener_search_oral_arguments. Returns case metadata, panel IDs, duration, MP3 URL, docket and available transcript. Oversized text or metadata returns outline then page responses; continue retrieval.next_cursor as cursor with the unchanged ID/sections selection until null. The argument date comes from search or the linked docket.

Fetch a page of parties and their attorneys of record for a RECAP federal docket by docket ID. Returns each party's name, role (Plaintiff, Defendant, Petitioner, Respondent, etc.), and their attorneys with contact information, scoped to this docket. Costs one party request plus up to five attorney roster requests. A later roster page blocked by the local request budget returns fetched detail with capped resolution, unresolved IDs, and the remaining roster cursor. Obtain docket IDs from courtlistener_search_dockets or courtlistener_get_docket.

Resolve legal citations (e.g., "410 U.S. 113", "93 S. Ct. 705") to opinion cluster IDs and case metadata. Enables workflows that start from a known citation rather than a search query. CourtListener extracts every citation it finds in the submitted text, so passing a passage returns one entry per citation, each with its own resolution status — an unresolved or ambiguous citation is reported in the results, not raised as an error. Supports standard US reporter formats. Costs one request against CourtListener's per-citation quota, plus one ordinary request per distinct docket whose court is resolved — max_court_lookups bounds that second half (default 4, set 0 to skip court resolution entirely). CourtListener meters this endpoint by citations submitted rather than by call, so a long passage spends proportionally more of that quota. Requires authentication — uses the CourtListener /citation-lookup/ endpoint.

List courts with optional filtering by jurisdiction type, active/inactive status, and scraper coverage. Primarily used to discover court IDs for use in search and filter parameters across all other courtlistener tools. Defaults to the active bench — the courts CourtListener still scrapes; pass status:'inactive' for historical courts or status:'any' for every court. A bundled snapshot returns the complete list of matching court IDs without paging whenever the filtered set fits the response budget, which covers the default bench and every jurisdiction filter. Full court records — names, citation strings, scraper status — come live from CourtListener at a fixed 20 rows per page, so pull those only when a court ID alone is not enough.

Search RECAP federal court dockets. Query terms match case name, docket number, party, and attorney names; filters narrow by party name, court, and filing date. RECAP is a crowd-sourced mirror of PACER (the federal court filing system) — coverage varies by court and date. Returns docket metadata with the parties, attorneys, and firms of record, plus up to 3 sample document entries per docket. Use courtlistener_lookup_courts to find court IDs.

Search federal judicial financial disclosure filings — the annual reports judges file on investments, gifts, debts, outside positions, and income. Filter by judge (person ID from courtlistener_search_judges) and/or filing year; the year filter is applied to the fetched page only (CourtListener has no server-side year filter), so page through with cursor to reach a judge's filings for a year that fall on later pages. Returns per-filing metadata, category counts, itemized gifts, and a link to the source PDF. Line-item investments (often hundreds per filing, with coded values) are summarized as counts; the linked PDF carries the full itemization. Use this for judicial-ethics and recusal research after identifying a judge's person ID.

Search judge/person records by name, appointing president, court, political affiliation, or demographic. Returns biographical data, current position, and appointment summary. Use courtlistener_get_judge for full appointment history and education records.

Full-text search across 9M+ written US court opinions with field-level filtering. Returns opinion cluster summaries with case metadata, citations, matched text snippets, and the individual opinion variants filed in each case. Supports CourtListener field syntax (caseName:"roe v wade", court_id:scotus, judge:"Alito") and boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). Use courtlistener_lookup_courts to find court IDs. CourtListener publishes free-tier limits of 5 req/min, 50/hr, 125/day; actual limits vary by token tier.

Search appellate oral argument audio recordings — the largest public collection of oral argument audio. Returns recording metadata with two direct MP3 links per result (download_url at the originating court, local_path for CourtListener's durable copy), panel judge IDs, and transcript snippets where available. Panel judge IDs can be passed to courtlistener_get_judge for biographical context.