# OpenJurist

> OpenJurist is a free, open, public-domain legal-research portal for United States law — federal, state, and tribal. It carries federal case law (U.S. Supreme Court + the Federal Reporter series F.1d/F.2d/F.3d), state case law, the United States Code (with historical versions), a multi-source legal dictionary, federal judges with appointment and education histories, a federal/state/tribal court directory, law schools and libraries, founding documents, U.S. presidents, named statutes, and a curated set of 304 landmark Supreme Court decisions. Source data is public domain; the enrichment (citation graph, treatment classifications) is open-source. Free of charge for low-volume use.

OpenJurist does not paywall public-domain content and does not sell user data. It is not a litigation-analytics product — we don't predict case outcomes for litigation strategy. A post-launch empirical-findings layer (admin-reviewed, AI-drafted analytical reports, each with a defended methodology) is in development; the corpus and the JSON API described below are live now.

## Read-only JSON API

All endpoints live under `/api/v1/`. Stable JSON contract. No auth required for low-volume use; rate limits + tiered keys ship post-launch. Paths and params below are real and callable.

### Case law (opinions)

- `GET /api/v1/opinions/by-path?path=/{citation-path}` — one opinion by its citation URL path; `path` must begin with `/` (e.g. `?path=/347/us/483`)
- `GET /api/v1/opinions/by-volume?series={series}&volume={n}` — every opinion in a reporter volume
- `GET /api/v1/opinions/by-series?series={series}` — volumes available in a reporter series
- `GET /api/v1/opinions/notable?series=&volume=&limit=&offset=` — notable opinions, paginated
- `GET /api/v1/landmark-cases/by-series?series={series}` — 304 curated SCOTUS landmarks (144 marked overruled)
- `GET /api/v1/federal-reporters` — reporter-series directory

### Statutes + codes

- `GET /api/v1/usc/titles` — all U.S. Code titles
- `GET /api/v1/usc/by-path?path={path}&asOf={YYYY-MM-DD}` — a USC node, optionally as of a historical date
- `GET /api/v1/state-code?state={st}&code={code}&section={sec}` — a state code section
- `GET /api/v1/statutes` — named-statute index
- `GET /api/v1/statutes/{slug}` — a named statute

### Dictionary

- `GET /api/v1/dictionary?q=&letter=&source=&page=` — browse / search terms (multi-source)
- `GET /api/v1/dictionary/{term-slug}` — combined entries for a term across all sources

### People + institutions

- `GET /api/v1/judges?scope=&court=&q=&letter=&sort=&page=` — federal judges, faceted
- `GET /api/v1/judges/{slug}` — a judge profile (appointments, education, opinions)
- `GET /api/v1/courts/by-slug?slug={slug}` — a court
- `GET /api/v1/courts/by-facet?facet={circuit|type|state}&value={slug}` — courts by facet (e.g. `?facet=state&value=california`)
- `GET /api/v1/schools?q=&accreditation=&letter=&page=` — law schools
- `GET /api/v1/schools/{slug}` — a law school
- `GET /api/v1/libraries/by-slug?slug={slug}` — a law library
- `GET /api/v1/presidents` and `GET /api/v1/presidents/{slug}` — U.S. presidents
- `GET /api/v1/founding/by-slug?slug={slug}` — a founding document

### Discovery + cross-sell

- `GET /api/v1/search?q={terms}&type={entity?}` — site-wide search
- `GET /api/v1/practice-areas` and `GET /api/v1/practice-areas/{slug}` — practice areas
- `GET /api/v1/entity-books?entityKind={kind}&entityId={id}` — books linked to an entity (bookshop cross-sell)

## Primary web surfaces

- `/cases` — case-law hub, faceted by jurisdiction
- `/code` — U.S. Code + state codes hub
- `/law-dictionary` — multi-source legal dictionary
- `/judge` — federal judges directory
- `/us-court` — federal, state, and tribal courts
- `/law-school` — law schools and libraries
- `/statute` — named statutes
- `/founding-documents-of-the-united-states` — founding documents
- `/books` — the OpenJurist Bookshop (affiliate, clearly labeled, vetted per a published rubric)
- `/developers` — this API directory + bulk-data + MCP discovery

## How to use the corpus

- AI agents: consume the `/api/v1/...` JSON endpoints directly. Free of charge for low-volume use. Rate limits + tiered access ship post-launch.
- Researchers / academics: bulk downloads via `/developers` post-launch (Cloudflare R2 hosted, by-jurisdiction sharded).
- Developers building integrations: MCP server endpoint at `/.well-known/mcp` (post-launch).

## Sources + licenses

Federal opinions: public domain (U.S. Government work).
U.S. Code: public domain.
Founding documents: public domain.
CourtListener bulk data: CC-BY-SA — Free Law Project attributed where used.
Caselaw Access Project: public domain bulk data.
Wikipedia-sourced curated lists (landmarks, overruled): CC-BY-SA.
OpenJurist enrichment (citation graph, treatment classifications): open-source, license being finalized.

## Post-launch: empirical findings

OpenJurist launches as a research portal. After launch it adds an empirical-findings layer — admin-reviewed, AI-drafted analytical reports, each shipping with a plain-language summary, a defended methodology, and the underlying data. Closer to FiveThirtyEight / Empirical SCOTUS than to litigation prediction: opinionated about method, transparent about limits. Each finding's methodology page exposes the algorithm name + version, a plain-English description, the exact data inputs, the output shape, a known-limitations list, and the open-source code path. Findings are never deleted; if one is found wrong it is retracted publicly. These endpoints exist but are seeded only until the layer ships:

- `GET /api/v1/findings` — list published findings (`?homepage=1` → homepage subset)
- `GET /api/v1/findings/{slug}` — algorithm metadata + all published runs
- `GET /api/v1/findings/{slug}/{run-id}` — a single published run
- `GET /api/v1/daily-feed` — today's published daily-feed batch
- Web (rolling out): `/findings`, `/findings/{slug}/{run-id}`, `/methodology/{slug}`, `/findings.rss`

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Document version 2.0, 2026-06-13. Supersedes v1.0 (which led with the post-launch findings layer). See `import/analysis/HOMEPAGE_DESIGN.md` in the repo and `/developers` for the full surface.