incrediblecrab/scotus-cases

Supreme Court of the United States: Cases

One row is one (term, docket) case: the case's docket page from www.supremecourt.gov as served, with the fields parsed from it, and the case's opinions and argument transcripts, with their text, from the file-centric SCOTUS datasets.

The source datasets are incrediblecrab/scotus-opinions, incrediblecrab/scotus-oral-arguments and incrediblecrab/scotus-case-documents. A term's cases are the dockets its argument transcripts, opinions, granted/noted list and volumes of the United States Reports name, so a petition the Court denied without an opinion has no row.

Coverage

Counts of cases, and of cases with a docket page online, at least one opinion, at least one argument transcript, and argument audio.

Term	Cases	Docket page	Opinions	Transcripts	Audio
OT1968	138	0	2	137	0
OT1969	146	0	4	143	0
OT1970	149	0	6	149	0
OT1971	204	0	185	173	0
OT1972	205	0	191	176	0
OT1973	196	0	192	170	0
OT1974	184	0	162	169	0
OT1975	212	0	192	178	0
OT1976	211	1	200	174	0
OT1977	183	1	172	164	0
OT1978	195	2	180	166	0
OT1979	175	2	172	156	0
OT1980	171	1	166	153	0
OT1981	209	0	202	184	0
OT1982	195	2	192	182	0
OT1983	196	1	192	184	0
OT1984	184	0	180	171	0
OT1985	181	0	181	171	0
OT1986	183	1	182	175	0
OT1987	165	1	164	161	0
OT1988	180	0	176	170	0
OT1989	151	0	150	146	0
OT1990	137	0	137	125	0
OT1991	131	0	130	124	0
OT1992	124	2	123	116	0
OT1993	112	0	112	99	0
OT1994	101	2	101	94	0
OT1995	105	0	105	89	0
OT1996	104	0	104	89	0
OT1997	105	1	103	96	0
OT1998	106	0	99	88	0
OT1999	93	2	93	82	0
OT2000	95	32	95	81	0
OT2001	96	91	96	78	0
OT2002	94	91	93	77	0
OT2003	87	87	87	74	0
OT2004	94	94	94	70	0
OT2005	103	103	103	75	0
OT2006	86	86	86	71	0
OT2007	81	81	78	70	0
OT2008	98	98	96	78	0
OT2009	102	102	99	77	0
OT2010	94	94	94	78	78
OT2011	92	92	88	71	70
OT2012	83	83	83	75	75
OT2013	88	88	81	70	70
OT2014	87	87	84	67	66
OT2015	95	95	90	69	69
OT2016	103	103	96	64	64
OT2017	106	106	100	63	63
OT2018	117	117	114	70	70
OT2019	130	128	110	58	58
OT2020	133	133	128	58	58
OT2021	123	123	116	63	63
OT2022	105	105	103	59	59
OT2023	105	105	104	61	61
OT2024	130	130	127	62	62
OT2025	123	123	122	58	58
OT2026	31	31	1	3	3
Total	7,812	2,627	7,118	6,454	1,047

Schema

Column	Type	Description
term	int32	October Term.
docket	string	Supreme Court docket number, written one way whichever form a source uses: 24-1260, the application 25A1, or the original case 141, Orig., which sources also write 141-Orig, 141orig or 22O141.
case_name	string	Case name from the docket page, else the most common title the opinion and transcript rows give, else the granted/noted list's title or the caption of the United States Reports, which are in capitals; the list's, for a consolidated case, can carry its markup, such as )2 CFX.
case_name_source	string	docket or source.
sources	large_string	JSON list of the source collections that name the docket.
docket_url	string	Address of the docket page fetched, or of the last one tried when none was found.
docket_format	string	new for /docket/docketfiles/html/public/…html, old for /docketfiles/…htm.
docket_found	bool	Whether the Court has a docket page online for the case; null until a run has asked.
docket_fetched_at	string	UTC time the docket page was last fetched, or checked and found unchanged.
docket_etag	string	ETag the docket page was served with.
docket_last_modified	string	Last-Modified the docket page was served with.
docket_html	large_binary	Docket page bytes as served; for a docket with no page, the Court's not-found page.
docket_text	large_string	Rendered text of the docket page.
docketed_date	string	ISO date of Docketed:.
linked_with	string	The docket page's Linked with field.
lower_court	string	The docket page's Lower Ct: field.
lower_court_case_numbers	large_string	JSON list of the lower court's case numbers.
lower_court_decision_date	string	ISO date of the lower court's decision.
questions_presented_url	string	Link to the Questions Presented PDF, which the docket page of a granted case gives.
proceedings	large_string	JSON list of docket entries in page order: date, text, and documents, the title and link of each document filed with the entry.
attorneys	large_string	Rendered attorneys section of the docket page.
opinions	large_string	JSON list of the case's opinions from the source datasets: id, url, date, title, citation (the United States Reports citation the listing gives), collection, text_source, text and ocr_text, and pages, null for a file that holds one opinion; for a file of the United States Reports that holds many, pages is the first and last page of the case's opinion (1-based, of the PDF) and the text is those pages. An entry with collection us-reports is the case as a volume of the Reports prints it, with the caption's date and title and the citation its running heads give.
transcripts	large_string	JSON list of the case's argument transcript rows from the source dataset, with text and ocr_text.
audio	large_string	JSON list of the case's argument audio: the page, the MP3 link and the argument date. The MP3 files are linked, not stored.
source_rows	large_string	JSON list of the source rows that name the docket.

Updates and limits

A GitHub Actions workflow runs the builder at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC, before it syncs the source datasets, so a row reflects its sources as of the previous run; GitHub starts scheduled runs late when it is busy. A run assembles a term again when one of its source partitions changed, and asks for a docket page again when it is due: after 6 hours for the current and previous terms, after 7 days for a page found in an older term, and after 30 days for a docket with no page. It asks conditionally where it can, so an unchanged page keeps its stored bytes. A docket that a run does not reach keeps what the last run stored.

The opinion listings start at OT2017 for Opinions of the Court and OT2011 for Opinions Relating to Orders; earlier opinions are only in the volumes of the United States Reports (collection us-reports of scotus-opinions). Once opinions are printed, a listing links the bound volume or preliminary print at the page each starts on instead of the slip opinion. A case's pages of such a file run from that page to the page before the next page any listing links in it, and stop early at a page of orders (whose running head gives dates), a Reporter's Note, the heading of the orders, the Court's allotment or rules orders, or the index; an opinion printed on the page of the order it concerns carries the orders printed around it on those pages. Some listed files answer 404 on the Court's site (in September 2026, the four OT2017 preliminary prints of volumes 584 and 585, and every file the OT2011 to OT2015 Opinions Relating to Orders list), so those listed files are missing here. A case that no listing gives an opinion of the Court or in chambers, which is every case before OT2017, gets the pages of the Reports that print it, from the volumes dated to its term: a case starts on the page whose caption gives its docket and dates, its pages run to the page before the next caption and stop early as above, its date is the last date of the caption (for a decree, the date it was entered) and its citation comes from the running heads. A consolidated case whose listing names only its lead docket gets the opinion whose first two pages carry the caption's footnote naming it among the cases decided together (*Together with No. 25–250, …); a numbered footnote, which is about another case, is not read. The Reports print a docket with its year from OT1971; before that a caption numbers a case No. 15, which no other source uses, so before OT1971 only original cases get their pages. The volumes before 502 are scans read by OCR: a caption the OCR misreads is missed and its pages go to the case before it, and a misread docket gives the pages to the wrong case or to a row of its own. A docket that would be dated after the next term or more than ten years before the term is taken for a misreading and dropped. In OT1970, OT1971, OT1982, OT1990, OT1995, OT2005, OT2013 and OT2017, 716 captions give a docket that another source also names; the Reports' titles of 14 of them differ from the other sources', 9 because the cases were decided together and 5 because the same case is named another way, and none because of a misread docket. That comparison cannot catch a misread docket that no other source names, which makes a row of its own. The Court's online dockets begin during OT1999, where some cases have a page and others do not (No. 99-478 has one, No. 99-5525 none); a case without a page has docket_found false. Documents linked from docket entries (petitions, briefs, the Questions Presented) and argument audio are linked, not stored.

License

Supreme Court opinions, orders and dockets are works of the United States Government, which are not subject to copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. § 105). Argument transcripts are prepared for the Court by court reporting companies; this dataset makes no claim about their copyright status. This card does not give legal advice.