`get_opinion`

Pack: court-listener · Endpoint: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/court-listener/mcp

No MCP client? Call it directly: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/get_opinion for the schema, then POST the same URL with its arguments for the data.

The full text of one US court opinion by its CourtListener id.

Tool description as the model sees it

Get the FULL TEXT of a US court opinion by its CourtListener opinion ID (the opinion_id returned by search_opinions). Covers 8.3 million opinions, 71% state case law — no API key needed. Returns the opinion text, the case name, the real filing date, author, citation count, whether the text came from OCR of a scan, and the data as-of date. Opinions filed after that date may fall through to live search.

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`id`	number	yes	CourtListener opinion ID (numeric)

Example call

Arguments

{
  "id": 12345678
}

curl

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/court-listener/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"get_opinion","arguments":{"id":12345678}}}'

TypeScript (@pipeworx/sdk)

import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const pipeworx = new Pipeworx();

const result = await pipeworx.call('get_opinion', {
  "id": 12345678
});

Response shape

Always returns: id, author, type, date_created, download_url, url, text

Field	Type	Description
`id`	number	Opinion ID
`author`	string \| null	Author of the opinion
`type`	string \| null	Opinion type
`date_created`	string \| null	Date opinion was created
`download_url`	string \| null	URL to download opinion
`url`	string \| null	URL to opinion on CourtListener
`text`	string \| null	Full or truncated opinion text

Full JSON Schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "id": {
      "type": "number",
      "description": "Opinion ID"
    },
    "author": {
      "type": [
        "string",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "Author of the opinion"
    },
    "type": {
      "type": [
        "string",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "Opinion type"
    },
    "date_created": {
      "type": [
        "string",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "Date opinion was created"
    },
    "download_url": {
      "type": [
        "string",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "URL to download opinion"
    },
    "url": {
      "type": [
        "string",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "URL to opinion on CourtListener"
    },
    "text": {
      "type": [
        "string",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "Full or truncated opinion text"
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "id",
    "author",
    "type",
    "date_created",
    "download_url",
    "url",
    "text"
  ]
}

Connect

Add this to your MCP client config, or use one-click install buttons:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "court-listener": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/court-listener/mcp"
    }
  }
}

See Getting Started for client-specific install steps.

get_opinion