OpenJurist
OpenJurist is a free legal-research portal for United States federal, state, and tribal law, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S.
What OpenJurist is
OpenJurist is a free legal-research portal for United States federal, state, and tribal law, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories. Its collection brings together court opinions, the U.S. Code, a legal dictionary drawing on multiple sources, judges, courts, law schools, founding documents, and 304 curated landmark decisions. Case pages provide citation profiles, citation activity over time, appellate history, and passages later courts rely on. A free citation checker can verify whether a case exists, remains good law, and contains a cited quotation. Other tools cover circuit splits by issue, judge records, case status, and comparisons of state statutes with federal law. OpenJurist says quotations are checked against source opinions and machine-derived analysis is labeled with links to its methodology. The site is readable without an account. Developers can retrieve JSON through a read-only API; low-volume use is free, with no numeric request limit stated. OpenJurist describes the service as public research, not legal advice, and does not guarantee its content is accurate, complete, or adequate.
Good
- Broad federal, state, and tribal coverage
- Free citation checker and case analytics
- Read-only JSON API for low-volume use
- Readable without an account
Watch out
- No docket search or research alerts
- Content is not guaranteed accurate or complete
Who it suits
It suits people researching U.S. case law and statutes, as well as developers needing read-only legal-data access. It is a research resource, not legal advice.
Verdict
OpenJurist combines a broad legal collection with citation checks and case analysis at no charge. Treat its material as a research aid rather than legal advice, and note that docket search and alerts are not offered.
Plans and prices
From OpenJurist's own pricing page, checked 8 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Free access | Free | Free for low-volume use |
The facts
Each one read from OpenJurist's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Accessibility
- The site aims to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA and lists unaudited areas including bulk data tables, older scanned material, and admin tools.checked 8 Oct 2026
- API
- Developers can pull JSON from a read-only API with endpoints for opinions, statutes, dictionary entries, judges, courts, and search.checked 8 Oct 2026
- API usage limit
- The API is free of charge for low-volume use; the page does not state a numeric request limit.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Audience and disclaimer
- OpenJurist describes itself as a public legal-research resource and says its content is not legal advice and is not guaranteed to be accurate, complete, or adequate.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Case analytics
- Case pages provide citation profiles, citations over time, appellate history, and passages later courts rely on.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Data sharing
- OpenJurist says it does not sell personal information or share it for advertising, and identifies Google Analytics and Cloudflare as service providers.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- An MCP endpoint for connecting assistants such as Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Cursor, and Perplexity is listed as coming post-launch.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Other analysis
- The site describes circuit splits organized by issue, judge records, case status, and comparisons of state statutes with federal law.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Privacy
- The site can be read without an account; administrator-only sign-in is available at launch, and server logs include request IP addresses retained as needed for security, error diagnosis, and abuse prevention.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Quote verification
- The citation checker verifies whether a case exists, whether it is still good law, and whether a quotation appears in it; the checker is free.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Research corpus
- The portal includes court opinions, the U.S. Code, a multi-source legal dictionary, judges, courts, law schools, founding documents, and 304 curated landmark decisions.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Verification method
- OpenJurist says quotations are checked against source opinions and machine-derived analysis is labeled and linked to its methodology.checked 8 Oct 2026
- What it does
- OpenJurist is a free legal-research portal for federal, state, and tribal United States law.checked 8 Oct 2026
Money
- Planned availability
- Bulk data downloads and interactive OpenAPI documentation are listed as coming post-launch.checked 8 Oct 2026
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