The record · read at the source
Legal insiders live
in the docket.
Every American case is paperwork before it is news: the complaint filed, the judge assigned, the opinion handed down. The professionals read it in PACER; this page reads the free mirror of that record — the Free Law Project’s CourtListener, keyless: its standing lists read once by this site for every reader, your own searches straight from your browser — and sets it in a room worth sitting in: new opinions as they land, a search across ten million of them, fresh dockets hours old, and any judge’s whole career.
The reading room is the point: press an opinion and its own text is fetched and typeset here — and when the mirror holds no text for one, the page says so and hands you the record and the court’s own PDF instead of pretending.
The wire
New opinions, as they land.
The newest decisions across every court on the mirror — or the Supreme Court and the circuits alone — and a search that reads the full text of ten million opinions. In quotes it finds a phrase wherever a court wrote it: a 1950 California appeal, Werkman v. Howard Zink Corp., has the average juror “not possessed of super intelligence”.
The opinions
Waiting
The opinion
Fresh dockets
Filed hours ago.
The newest case filings on the mirror — who sued whom, in which court, before which judge. Rows link to the docket on the record.
The bench
Who is this judge?
The mirror keeps the whole bench record: every seat, who made the appointment, when it began and how it ended.
Method
The free mirror, and its manners.
One mirror, keyless
Everything reads CourtListener’s public API — the Free Law Project’s mirror of the federal and state record — keyless. The standing lists the page opens on (the newest opinions, the Supreme Court’s, the circuits’ and the fortnight’s dockets) are the same for everyone, so this site’s server asks the mirror for each at most every twelve minutes and hands every reader that copy, with the time it was read; it keeps the copy for up to a day, and nothing about you beyond a short-lived request count under a keyed hash of your address. Your own searches go straight from your browser to the mirror. What you see is the mirror’s own answer.
The text is theirs, verbatim
The reading room shows the mirror’s captured text of an opinion exactly as held, typeset but untouched. Where a decision exists only as the court’s PDF, the room says so and links the record and the PDF — it never OCRs, summarises or invents.
A guest’s pace
Anonymous readers are rate-limited by the mirror, fairly. The page spaces its own requests, and when the wire asks it to slow down it says that on the status line and waits — it does not hammer a nonprofit’s servers.
Where the mirror ends
PACER charges by the page and holds documents the free mirror does not; docket rows link into the record so you can see exactly what is and is not there. This property reports the courts’ paperwork; it is not legal advice.
Data courtesy of Free Law Project / CourtListener. Consider supporting them — the mirror is a public good.