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Jurisdictions

Research catalogue for scaling legex to new jurisdictions. Each row is a candidate country/court, what data source we'd use, how to isolate civil-law cases, and how hard the scraper looks. Two jurisdictions are already implemented; the others are prioritised into waves.

Source links and contact names come from GitHub issue #3 and Daniel's compilation table. Link checks and source research were performed via WebFetch/WebSearch; HuggingFace datasets were preferred where available.

Status

# Country Court Source type Civil filter Dates Recommendation
done Switzerland Bundesgericht HF voilaj/swiss-caselaw chamber prefix 4* / 5* 2015–2025 Done
done France Cour de cassation PISTE Judilibre API chambers civ1/civ2/civ3 2015–2025 Done
done Australia High Court HF isaacus/high-court-of-australia-cases exclude "v The King/Queen" 2015–2025 Done (link via hcourt.gov.au per-case page, docket extracted from text)
done Germany BGH HF openlegaldata/court-decisions-germany (gated) case-ID <Roman> ZR/ZB/ZA 2015–2018 Done (coverage tails off post-2018; gated T&C + HF_TOKEN)
done United States SCOTUS HF free-law/Caselaw_Access_Project (gated) exclude "United States v." + state-v heuristic 2015–2020 Done (CAP dataset ends 2020; gated T&C + HF_TOKEN)
done United Kingdom Supreme Court BAILII / supremecourt.uk
used https://nationalarchives.github.io/ds-find-caselaw-docs/public		 all UKSC = civil/mixed 2009–2025 Blocked on BAILII (Anubis proof-of-work); supremecourt.uk feasible with paginated scrape
done Belgium Cour de Cassation juportal.be HTML C* (civil) vs P* case-ID prefix 2015–2025 Done (form POST + server-side pagination on juportal content pages)
3 Austria OGH RIS (ris.bka.gv.at) JSON API Rechtsgebiete == Zivilrecht 2000–2025 Wave 1 (API exists, but param schema needs more research)
4 Armenia Cassation Court cassationcourt.am HTML dedicated /precedent/civil-cases-advanced-search 2015–2025 Wave 2 (CSRF-token form session handling required)
Done New Zealand High Court + Court of Appeal justice.govt.nz JDO HTML "Civil" dropdown 2015–2025 Wave 2
6 Hong Kong CFA + High Court legalref.judiciary.hk HTML court-level + case-type dropdowns 1997–2025 Wave 2
7 Singapore Supreme Court + SICC judiciary.gov.sg HTML civil vs criminal case summaries 2000–2025 Wave 2
8 Korea Supreme Court eng.scourt.go.kr HTML case designation Da (civil) 2015–2025 Wave 3 — Hangul
9 India Supreme Court sci.gov.in HTML + PDF free-text "civil appeal" search 2013–2025 Wave 3 — PDF heavy
10 Philippines Supreme Court elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph HTML monthly decision index 1996–2025 Wave 3
11 Brazil STJ scon.stj.jus.br HTML "Pesquisa Pronta" civil themes 2015–2025 Wave 3 — verify scope
12 Dominican Republic Suprema Corte poderjudicial.gob.do HTML First Chamber (Civil + Commercial) 2015–2025 Wave 3
13 Georgia Supreme Court supremecourt.ge HTML + AJAX chamber = "Civil" 2015–2025 Wave 3 — needs Playwright
14 Kazakhstan Supreme Court sud.gov.kz HTML Bank of Judicial Acts by case type 2009–2024 Wave 3
15 Ukraine Supreme Court reyestr.court.gov.ua HTML case form "Цивільні справи" 2015–2025 Wave 3 — bot protection
16 Taiwan Judicial Yuan judgment.judicial.gov.tw ASPX 民事 case-type + ROC calendar 2020–2025 Wave 4 — ASPX + ROC calendar
17 Nepal Supreme Court nkp.gov.np HTML advanced-search case type ~2015–2025 Wave 4 — Bikram Sambat calendar, Nepali Unicode
18 Italy Corte di Cassazione italgiure.giustizia.it sezione civile (I–VI) 1923–2025 Blocked — subscription required
19 Spain Tribunal Supremo poderjudicial.es Sala de lo Civil 2000–2025 Blocked — CGPJ bulk-use restriction, only 147 SC civil cases/yr
20 China Supreme People's Court wenshu.court.gov.cn case-type filter 2015–2025 Blocked — anti-bot + phone registration; check NYU Shanghai mirror
21 Belarus Supreme Court court.gov.by — pre-2014 Plenums only Blocked — no public decision database

Legend: Wave 1 = high confidence, should implement first. Wave 2 = moderate effort. Wave 3 = special challenges (encoding, bot protection, AJAX). Wave 4 = calendar/script conversion required. Blocked = needs a policy change, alternative source, or is not feasible.

Per-country detail

Short notes per country with sample URL, rate/auth notes, and the scraper sketch. Implementation tickets will expand these.

Wave 1 — implement next

Wave 2 — moderate effort

  • Germany — Bundesgerichtshof Zivilsenate

    • Link: https://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de
    • Civil filter: case prefix ZR (Zivilrecht) across senates I–XII.
    • Auth: none (scraping BGH is legal per 2024 precedent).
    • Scraper: parse cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/document.py; ~300 decisions/year civil.

  • Armenia — Court of Cassation

  • United States — SCOTUS (via CourtListener)

    • Official portal: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/USReports.aspx (mixed civil/criminal, no filter).
    • Preferred: CourtListener API (courtlistener.com/api) or HF "Pile of Law".
    • Civil filter: apply post-hoc via case-type classification (SCOTUS cases are mostly certiorari; filter by case topic).
    • Auth: CourtListener has free API keys with rate limits.
    • Scraper: CourtListener API /api/rest/v3/opinions/?court=scotus.

  • New Zealand — High Court + Court of Appeal

  • Hong Kong — Court of Final Appeal + High Court

  • Singapore — Supreme Court + SICC

Wave 3 — special challenges

  • Korea: scourt.go.kr, case designation Da = civil appellate. Hangul full-text.
  • India: sci.gov.in, PDF-heavy; free-text "civil appeal" search. Multiple scripts possible.
  • Philippines: elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph, chronological monthly index, DataTables pagination.
  • Brazil: scon.stj.jus.br — "Pesquisa Pronta" is curated themes; verify whether the themed set is representative of civil cases or only a subset.
  • Dominican Republic: poderjudicial.gob.do — First Chamber (Civil + Commercial). Spanish.
  • Georgia: supremecourt.ge — AJAX modals; needs Playwright/Selenium rather than requests.
  • Kazakhstan: sud.gov.kz — Bank of Judicial Acts, filter by case type. Kazakh/Russian/English.
  • Ukraine: reyestr.court.gov.ua — case form "Цивільні справи". Anti-bot protection, "test mode" warnings; rate-limit gently.

Wave 4 — calendar / script conversion required

  • Taiwan: judgment.judicial.gov.tw is an ASP.NET form (stateful POST + cookies). Case-type filter 民事 (civil). Year input is ROC calendar (民國 N = Gregorian N+1911). Example: ROC 113 = 2024.
  • Nepal: nkp.gov.np uses Bikram Sambat calendar (~57 years ahead; 2015 AD ≈ 2072 BS). Nepali-Unicode-only search form. Calendar conversion helper required.

Blocked / investigate later

  • Italy — italgiure.giustizia.it is subscription-gated. Investigate whether the research group can obtain institutional access or negotiate bulk-export terms. No public bulk download.
  • Spain — poderjudicial.es CENDOJ prohibits bulk use (>100/day = ToS breach). Only ~147 Supreme Court civil cases since 2017 meet the Sala de lo Civil filter — insufficient for a 130-sample Goldenset unless we find alternative CENDOJ OpenData access.
  • China — wenshu.court.gov.cn requires Chinese mobile-phone registration and has aggressive anti-bot. Consider the NYU Shanghai Library snapshot or the CAIL2018 civil-cases dataset before attempting live scraping.
  • Belarus — court.gov.by only publishes Plenum explanations (non-binding jurisprudence) in the official gazette "Sudovy vestnik". No structured civil-decision database.

Key observations

  1. Seven jurisdictions are HuggingFace-ready or have usable public APIs (CH, FR already done; AU via isaacus/high-court-of-australia-cases; UK via BAILII; US via CourtListener). These are cheapest to implement and should be the next tickets.
  2. Most mid-tier countries are HTML scrapes with a dedicated civil filter at source (Austria, Germany, Belgium, Armenia, NZ, HK, Singapore, Dominican Republic). Each is ~1–2 days of scraper work.
  3. Four countries are effectively blocked without a policy change or alternative source (Italy, Spain, China, Belarus). Flag these to Adrian / Nerea / Jelle / contacts for guidance rather than burning engineering time.
  4. Non-Gregorian calendars and non-Latin scripts affect Taiwan (ROC), Nepal (Bikram Sambat), and the CJK countries. These need conversion utilities before scraping; consider a shared legex/utils/calendar.py when the first non-Gregorian jurisdiction ships.
  5. Prioritise "civil filter at source" over post-hoc filtering. Countries where the court already exposes a civil-only search (Armenia, Belgium C-prefix, Austria N Ob, Germany ZR) produce high-precision Goldensets with minimal noise.