| # 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](https://github.com/Engineers-for-Science-Initiative/legex/issues/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<br />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 |
|
|
| - United Kingdom — Supreme Court (BAILII) |
|
|
| - Link: https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/ |
| - Sample: https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2024/24.html |
| - Civil filter: all UKSC decisions are civil/mixed; filter by year and case topic. |
| - Auth: none; free, no cookies, no anti-bot. |
| - Scraper: scrape `bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/<year>/` index pages; follow per-case HTML or PDF. ~100–150 civil cases/year 2015–2025. Stable structure. |
| - Australia — High Court |
|
|
| - Link: https://www.hcourt.gov.au/cases-and-judgments/judgments |
| - HF dataset: `isaacus/high-court-of-australia-cases` (also `isaacus/open-australian-legal-corpus`). |
| - Civil filter: case-type classification; HCA mixes civil and constitutional. |
| - Scraper: reuse the HF parquet path, same pattern as CH. Trivial. |
| - Austria — Oberster Gerichtshof (RIS) |
|
|
| - Link: https://www.ris.bka.gv.at |
| - Sample: https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/Dokumente/Justiz/JJT_20241024_OGH0002_0010OB00161_24V0000_000/ |
| - Civil filter: senate codes like `Ob` for civil revision. |
| - Auth: none; German only. |
| - Scraper: query RIS by date+senate, paginate by case number. |
| |
| ### 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 |
| |
| - Link: https://www.cassationcourt.am/en/precedent/civil-cases-advanced-search |
| - Civil filter: already has a dedicated civil-cases advanced-search form. |
| - Auth: none. Armenian / English / Russian UI. |
| - Scraper: POST the advanced-search form, parse results table. |
| - 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 |
| |
| - Link: https://www.justice.govt.nz/courts/decisions/jdo/ |
| - Civil filter: "Civil" dropdown in JDO search. |
| - Auth: none. 3-day publication lag. |
| - Scraper: JDO search form, paginate, follow per-case HTML. |
| - Hong Kong — Court of Final Appeal + High Court |
| |
| - Link: https://legalref.judiciary.hk/lrs/common/ju/judgment.jsp |
| - Civil filter: court level + case type dropdowns (civil/criminal). |
| - Scraper: GET-based search form, fairly mechanical. |
| - Singapore — Supreme Court + SICC |
| |
| - Link: https://www.judiciary.gov.sg/judgments/judgments-case-summaries |
| - Civil filter: case summaries classified as civil vs criminal; SICC (commercial, 2015+) is a separate civil-only feed. |
| - Scraper: two feeds — general 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. |
| |
