
Three hundred and sixty years of United States caselaw - crunchiebones
https://case.law/
======
JackC
Hi! I'm a developer on this project. Happy to answer questions for the next
hour or so, and I'll check back tomorrow as well.

This is a first public release and the Harvard Library Innovation Lab is a
small team, so please look at the site as just the beginning! In particular
we're starting by targeting developers with an API and bulk data downloads.
More user friendly features like a front-end browser, PDF scans, ngram
browser, etc. are on the roadmap, but we're hoping other developers will step
in and build some great tools as well.

~~~
ugh123
If the project is truly "free" \- build it in a way that can be passed down
through generations: easily indexed with semantic data and without proprietary
logins or fiddle-some navigation. archive.org would be a good long term home
or some other long lasting and perpetually funded service, beyond what Harvard
would spend its billions of alumni bucks on.

~~~
bpchaps
No kidding. After looking at this project for a bit longer, I'm _much less_
optimistic about this project. Frankly, it really depresses me that they
require research agreements to download all information.

Developers of this project: _Please_ make the information freely available in
a way that doesn't require agreements with a giant for-profit company.

For now, I'm convinced that this project is nothing more than a veiled
advertisement for lexis nexis.

~~~
paulgb
My reading of this is that it's something they're contractually bound to for
the near term but not forever:

> Access limitations on full text and bulk data are a component of Harvard’s
> collaboration agreement with Ravel Law, Inc. (now part of Lexis-Nexis).
> These limitations will end, at the latest, in March of 2024.

Hopefully this means no logins, also, but that's less clear.

The blame on this should really fall on the courts that allow private
companies to paywall access to the rule of law. At least some states have
started to do it right:

> Once a jurisdiction transitions from print-first publishing to digital-first
> publishing, these limitations cease. Thus far, Illinois and Arkansas have
> made this important and positive shift and, as a result, all historical
> cases from these jurisdictions are freely available to the public without
> restriction. We hope many other jurisdictions will follow their example
> soon.

~~~
JackC
> Hopefully this means no logins, also, but that's less clear.

The only things we have behind logins are what we are contractually required
to, yes. This gets pretty fine-grained -- if you do a logged-out search across
jurisdictions, requesting full text, the json contains error fields for the
specific fields we aren't allowed to share without a login yet.

~~~
paulgb
Awesome, thanks for the clarification!

------
jaytaylor
Is caselaw data an artifact originating from the public dollars which funded
the whole show to begin with?

Why isn't this data available for free to any American Citizen who pays taxes?
In the form of a torrent, the distribution cost is negligible. A reasonable
duplication fee seemed reasonable back when replicating vast amounts of
information involved massive amounts of paper and toner. But today.. I don't
understand.

I'm curious enough to have asked this same question on Quora [0].

YMMV.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/unanswered/How-can-LexisNexis-own-
the-...](https://www.quora.com/unanswered/How-can-LexisNexis-own-the-data-
originating-from-the-publicly-funded-legal-system)

~~~
JackC
Caselaw data is public domain, but it's very expensive to digitize -- partly
because it's mostly stored on paper, and partly because it's mixed together
with copyrighted material.

For this project we had to scan 40,000 volumes of caselaw. We used a high
speed scanner at the Harvard Law Library, and went through about 40 million
pages at a rate of 500,000 pages a week over a couple of years. The pages then
had to be redacted of copyrighted material like headnotes inserted by private
publishers, since courts typically don't publish the cases themselves, and
those redactions had to be checked by humans.

That work was funded by a startup, Ravel, which is why we ended up with
temporary limits on commercial use of the data. No later than March 2024,
however, it will all be fully available for bulk download by anyone in the
world. If necessary we'll set up a torrent. :)

(Hopefully earlier! For any state that starts officially publishing its
caselaw in digital form, we can immediately release their caselaw back to the
beginning, as we have already for Illinois and Arkansas.)

~~~
extortionist
One note that seems relevant to the grandparent comment, Ravel is now owned by
LexisNexis.

------
riffic
"Case Law" has a specific meaning for those of us who are not versed in the
jargon:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_law)

------
saltvedt
The Norwegian equivalent of this project, got sued for copyright infringement
of supreme court verdicts:
[http://www.wiumlie.no/2018/rettspraksis/10-22-returns](http://www.wiumlie.no/2018/rettspraksis/10-22-returns)

------
lennylemony
Here's the release! [https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2018/10/29/caselaw-
access-p...](https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2018/10/29/caselaw-access-
project-cap-launches-api-and-bulk-data-service/)

------
politician
"The agreement with our project partner, Ravel, requires us to limit access to
the full text of cases to no more than 500 cases per person, per day. This
limitation does not apply to researchers who agree to certain restrictions on
use and redistribution. Nor does this restriction apply to cases issued in
jurisdictions that make their newly issued cases freely available online in an
authoritative, citable, machine-readable format. We call these whitelisted
jurisdictions. Currently, Illinois and Arkansas are the only whitelisted
jurisdictions."

TLDR: 500 cases per day, but looks like you can buy access from Ravel [1].

[https://home.ravellaw.com/](https://home.ravellaw.com/)

~~~
chefandy
Yep— Ravel will absolutely negotiate commercial licenses. No later than 2024,
the entire corpus will be available for free for all use cases, including
commercial.

------
mchannon
Needs a simple JavaScript or similar client (REPL?) baked into the page.

API appears powerful, but lots of free alternatives that don’t require a
comfort level with shell scripting or REST calls.

~~~
zekevermillion
I'm not aware of a free alternative for _all_ US published caselaw. Could you
cite?

~~~
mchannon
google.com/scholar

I also really like casemine.com.

I have no idea how incomplete those archives are but I doubt they’re missing
much I’d be looking for.

~~~
zekevermillion
Well, google scholar certainly does not have all published opinions, far from
it. It is not an adequate research tool, just a starting point. I'm not
familiar with casemine, will check it out.

EDIT: casemine appears to be neither free, nor to have all published US
decisions as far as I can tell.

------
emmelaich
Consider github.

German and French law is already there.

[https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze](https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze)

[https://github.com/steeve/france.code-
civil](https://github.com/steeve/france.code-civil)

------
bpchaps
If the creators are listening in - do you have any plans to include the text
of the court docs as well?

~~~
JackC
The full text of the cases is available. For example, here is a query for the
full text of Illinois cases, which are available without a login:

[https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?jurisdiction=ill&full_case=tr...](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?jurisdiction=ill&full_case=true&page_size=1)

Full text for cases other than Illinois and Arkansas is limited to 500 cases
per person per day, which is why we don't include it in API results by
default.

~~~
bpchaps
Gotcha! I've been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks for
making it!

------
bulldog13
Do you have or know of, anything like this for federal courts (bankruptcy,
district, appellate, supreme) ?

~~~
rezlieg
project member here ... this site includes access to federal cases, e.g.
[https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?cite=&name_abbreviation=&juri...](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?cite=&name_abbreviation=&jurisdiction=us&reporter=&decision_date_min=1900-01-01&decision_date_max=2000-12-31&docket_number=&court=&search=&full_case=&body_format=)

------
dandare
I always wondered if any of the cases directly contradict each other.

------
TangoTrotFox
Can you elaborate on the notion of US case law, before the US existed? I don't
mean this to be snarky, I assume this was intentional. Is this referring to
cases prior to the US's founding, that the US then adopted as relevant legal
precedent?

~~~
JackC
Good question! This refers to caselaw from courts that predate the United
States, such as Maryland and Massachusetts:

[https://api.case.law/v1/cases/](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/)

State courts didn't come into existence with the US Constitution -- the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, for example, dates back to 1692, and
those precedents are still "good" in some sense though unlikely to be cited.

We don't have English precedents, unfortunately, as guessed by some sibling
comments.

------
scabbycakes
Mnn 360 years of United States coleslaw.

~~~
InclinedPlane
"Coleslaw" is an anglicization of the Dutch "koolsla" or cabbage salad. Its
existence in the US would likely date back to the first Dutch colony in North
America: New Netherland, which was first settled in the 1620s. As such,
American coleslaw has a history of roughly 390 years and antedates American
caselaw by a few decades.

~~~
JackC
You got me curious -- our first case with the modern term "coleslaw" is from
1935, in Rhode Island, and begins ominously with "The plaintiff in this case
was injured by swallowing two small pieces of wire concealed in an order of
beef stew, bread and coleslaw which she had purchased and was eating at
defendant’s lunch counter."

[https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?search=coleslaw&full_case=tru...](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?search=coleslaw&full_case=true)

Apologies that the link requires a login to view the full text, and for
various other shortcomings in the current browsing experience. Also apologies
to anyone who actually reads the coleslaw case -- caselaw is a scary place.

~~~
stephengillie
Coleslaw caselaw could go on Bob Loblaw's law blog.

