Search federal court cases by party name using the PACER Case Locator API

Steps

1. Obtain a PACER account at pacer.uscourts.gov; API credentials use the same PACER username and password — note that passwords must be rotated every 180 days per federal judiciary policy
2. Authenticate to the PCL API by obtaining a session token via the POST /pcl-public-api/rest/login endpoint with your PACER credentials in the request body
3. Search for cases by party name with GET /pcl-public-api/rest/cases/find?lastName={lastName}&firstName={firstName}&courtType={type}; filter by courtType (bk for bankruptcy, cv for civil, cr for criminal, ap for appellate) to narrow results
4. The response is a paginated list of case records with caseTitle, caseNumber, courtId, dateTerminated, and dateFiled; iterate through pages using the pageNumber and totalPages fields
5. Use the caseNumber and courtId to deep-link to the full docket in PACER or to fetch docket details using the RECAP/CourtListener API