Fetch a batch of recently published federal court opinion packages from the govinfo.gov USCOURTS collection API using an API key
domain: api.govinfo.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Register for a free API key at api.govinfo.gov and include it as the api_key query parameter on all requests
Query the collections endpoint to list recently published USCOURTS packages: GET https://api.govinfo.gov/collections/USCOURTS/START_DATE_ISO8601?pageSize=25&offsetMark=*&api_key=YOUR_KEY where START_DATE_ISO8601 is formatted as YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ
Each item in the packages array contains a packageId; use it to fetch package-level metadata: GET https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/PACKAGE_ID/summary?api_key=YOUR_KEY
To download the full opinion ZIP, construct: GET https://api.govinfo.gov/packages/PACKAGE_ID/zip?api_key=YOUR_KEY
For bulk incremental harvesting, advance the START_DATE on each run to the lastModified value of the previous batch's most recent item
Known gotchas
The USCOURTS collection contains opinions from selected appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts via a GPO/AOUSC collaboration; not all federal courts participate
The offsetMark parameter must be URL-encoded when used in subsequent paginated requests; use * for the first call
The API has rate limits; the DEMO_KEY provides limited access and will throttle quickly — register a named key for any production or bulk workload
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