court

MCP tool from Courtlistener MCP Server by cyanheads

is absent from the citation-lookup payload (the court lives on the linked docket), so it is resolved from docketid — one extra request per distinct docket, bounded by maxcourtlookups (default 4, up to 20; 0 skips court resolution). courtresolution (resolved / nodocket / lookupfailed / overbudget) sa

How to use it

court is exposed by the Courtlistener MCP Server MCP server. Add the server to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf and others), and the court tool becomes available to the model automatically. See the full listing for setup details and every tool this server provides.

Install Courtlistener MCP Server

$docker run --rm -e COURTLISTENER_API_TOKEN=your-token -p 3010:3010 courtlistener-mcp-server

FULL COURTLISTENER MCP SERVER LISTING

Other tools in Courtlistener MCP Server (23)

all_matching_court_ids

returns the complete filtered id set from a bundled snapshot of every CourtListener court, at no request cost — covers the default bench and every jurisdiction filter. Empty (not a truncated prefix) when more than 1,000 courts match; check allmatchingcourtidscomplete before reading emptiness as "no

cited_by

(default): opinions that cite this one — measures precedential influence and downstream adoption

citing

opinions this one cites — reveals the authority chain the court relied on

courtlistener_get_citations

Retrieve the citation network for an opinion: opinions cited by it (citing) or that cite it (citedby)

courtlistener_get_docket

Fetch docket metadata and entry list for a single federal case

courtlistener_get_financial_disclosure

Fetch one disclosure's parsed line items — investments, debts, positions, income, gifts — with coded values decoded to dollar ranges; selectable by category

courtlistener_get_judge

Fetch full biographical profile, appointment history, and education for a single judge

courtlistener_get_opinion

Fetch full text and metadata for an opinion cluster — returns all opinion variants (majority, concurrence, dissent)

courtlistener_get_oral_argument

Fetch full detail for a single oral argument — panel, duration, MP3 link, and speech-to-text transcript

courtlistener_get_parties

Fetch all parties and attorneys of record for a RECAP federal docket by docket ID

courtlistener_lookup_citation

Resolve legal citations (e.g., "410 U.S. 113") to cluster IDs and case metadata — one entry per citation found in the input

courtlistener_lookup_courts

List courts filtered by jurisdiction type, active/inactive status, and scraper coverage

courtlistener_search_dockets

Search RECAP federal court dockets by party name, attorney, court, and date

courtlistener_search_financial_disclosures

Search federal judicial financial disclosure filings by judge and year — category counts, itemized gifts, and source PDF

courtlistener_search_judges

Search judge records by name, appointing president, court, and political affiliation

courtlistener_search_opinions

Full-text search across 9M+ written court opinions with field-level filtering, date ranges, status, and sort

courtlistener_search_oral_arguments

Search appellate oral argument audio recordings by case name, court, and date argued

coverage_note

in every response — RECAP is crowd-sourced from PACER; completeness varies by court

entries_page_size

controls how many entries are returned (1–50); large cases have hundreds

has_opinion_scraper

filter useful for planning opinion searches — courts without scrapers have sparse coverage

party_name

filter applies in addition to (AND with) the q query — more precise than embedding party names in the query

snippet

is the matched excerpt from the first variant that carries one; CourtListener does not mark which variant the search matched

status

selects which bench to return: active (the default) only the courts CourtListener still scrapes, inactive only the historical and defunct ones, any both. Upstream filters these as disjoint sets, so any is the only value that reaches the whole list