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court_citation_map

Court opinion citation map

Which court opinion cites which, and how often, as CourtListener's citator resolved it. Both ids are opinion ids, not decision ids: join each to court_opinions.opinion_id, then court_opinions.cluster_id to court_opinion_clusters, to ask what cites a decision or which decisions are cited most. Rebuilt whole from each quarterly export. All columns are VARCHAR.

Coverage. Not a range. The complete 2026-06-30 CourtListener citation-map export: citing/cited opinion pairs, each unique as the publisher's schema requires, with no NULL depth. Only the publisher's surrogate row id is dropped. Citing and cited ids resolve through court_opinions of the same edition except a small residue (see data_quality). (measured 2026-09-22)

Data quality. On 2026-09-22 all but 3,758 citing ids and one cited id resolved through court_opinions of the same edition. The edges are the publisher's automated citation resolution, not a reviewed citator: citations it could not resolve are absent, and depth counts mentions, not treatment (followed, distinguished or overruled are not recorded). Several opinions of one decision each carry their own edges, and so do several clusters of one decision (see court_opinion_clusters.cluster_id): count decisions, not rows or clusters, by scdb_id where it is set, else by the heuristic cl_docket_id plus reporter citation, and query every cluster of a cited decision. Edges reach a recent decision late: Loper Bright (decided 2024-06-28) has one citing decision filed in 2024 against 151 for Chevron over the same months, and none of its citing clusters was created before 2025-01-13 (measured 2026-10-03 on the 2026-06-30 export); the publisher does not say why.

  • Parquet file: court_citation_map.parquet
  • MCP query_sql support: Configured; requires an available artifact.
  • Publication status: Not established by this schema page or its measurement date.
  • Row count: Not stated here; the MCP describe_table reply gives the live count under publication.
Column Type Description
citing_opinion_id VARCHAR CourtListener opinion ID of the opinion that cites. Joins court_opinions.opinion_id.
cited_opinion_id VARCHAR CourtListener opinion ID of the opinion cited. Joins court_opinions.opinion_id.
depth VARCHAR Number of times the citing opinion cites the cited one, as text.
dump_date VARCHAR The CourtListener bulk export the row was copied from (ISO date).