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OpenJurist
What it 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 covers court opinions, the U.S. Code, a multi-source legal dictionary, judges, courts, law schools, founding documents, and 304 selected landmark decisions. Case pages provide citation profiles, citation activity over time, appellate history, and passages later courts have relied on. The free citation checker can check whether a case exists, remains good law, and contains a quotation. Other material includes 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 identified with a link to its methodology. The site can be read without an account. Developers can retrieve JSON from a read-only API covering opinions, statutes, dictionary entries, judges, courts, and search; low-volume use is free, with no numeric request cap stated. OpenJurist describes its content as public research, not legal advice, and does not guarantee accuracy, completeness, or adequacy.
For and against
For
- Free portal with no account required to read
- Citation checker checks case status and quotations
- Case pages include appellate history and citation profiles
- Read-only API offers JSON endpoints
Against
- No docket search
- No research alerts
- Content is not legal advice
- Accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed
The verdict
OpenJurist combines legal materials, case analysis, and a free citation checker for United States law research. Readers should treat it as a research resource rather than legal advice, and note its stated limits on accuracy and completeness.
Who it suits
OpenJurist suits people researching United States law who want case and statute materials alongside citation tools. Developers may also find the read-only JSON API useful for low-volume access.
Plans and prices
Free access
Free for low-volume use
Read 8 Oct 2026 · openjurist.org
On the record
- 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.openjurist.org · read 8 Oct 2026
- API
- Developers can pull JSON from a read-only API with endpoints for opinions, statutes, dictionary entries, judges, courts, and search.openjurist.org · read 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.openjurist.org · read 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.openjurist.org · read 8 Oct 2026
- Case analytics
- Case pages provide citation profiles, citations over time, appellate history, and passages later courts rely on.openjurist.org · read 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.openjurist.org · read 8 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- An MCP endpoint for connecting assistants such as Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Cursor, and Perplexity is listed as coming post-launch.openjurist.org · read 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.openjurist.org · read 8 Oct 2026
- Planned availability
- Bulk data downloads and interactive OpenAPI documentation are listed as coming post-launch.openjurist.org · read 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.openjurist.org · read 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.openjurist.org · read 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.openjurist.org · read 8 Oct 2026
- Verification method
- OpenJurist says quotations are checked against source opinions and machine-derived analysis is labeled and linked to its methodology.openjurist.org · read 8 Oct 2026
- What it does
- OpenJurist is a free legal-research portal for federal, state, and tribal United States law.openjurist.org · read 8 Oct 2026
