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court_citations

Court reporter citations

Every reporter citation CourtListener records for a decision, such as "410 U.S. 113", "93 S. Ct. 705" or a WestLaw or neutral cite. Join cluster_id to court_opinion_clusters.cluster_id to reach the decision; a U.S. Reports citation found in a document (SpicyDocs' us_reports_cite rule) resolves through the rows with reporter 'U.S.', to every cluster carrying it (often two for a recent Supreme Court decision). Rebuilt whole from each quarterly export. All columns are VARCHAR, copied as the publisher wrote them.

Coverage. Not a range. The complete 2026-06-30 CourtListener citations export, copied field for field: every (cluster_id, volume, reporter, page) unique as the publisher's schema requires. The publisher cut this export hours after the cluster export, so a few citations name a cluster court_opinion_clusters lacks (63 on 2026-09-26, 43 of them added by the clusters' catch-up; receipt join-gaps-2026-09-26/i/). (measured 2026-09-22)

Data quality. Citations are the publisher's, not re-derived from opinion text; a decision missing a citation here may still carry one in print. Reporter strings are the publisher's abbreviations and are not normalized. page is text because some reporters page with letters or asterisks. A new export is refused until the published court_opinion_clusters reaches every cluster id it names; a cluster the publisher merged away after the export still dangles. The 2026-06-30 export holds no S. Ct. citation in volumes 143 and 144 (measured 2026-10-03).

  • Parquet file: court_citations.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
citation_id VARCHAR CourtListener citation ID. Primary key within one export.
cluster_id VARCHAR CourtListener decision-cluster ID the citation names; joins court_opinion_clusters.cluster_id.
volume VARCHAR Reporter volume as the publisher records it (a string; some volumes are years).
reporter VARCHAR Reporter abbreviation, such as U.S., F.3d or WL, as the publisher records it.
page VARCHAR Starting page or equivalent locator in the reporter, as text.
citation_type VARCHAR Publisher citation type code: 1 federal reporter, 2 state, 3 state regional, 4 specialty, 5 early U.S. Supreme Court, 6 Lexis, 7 WestLaw, 8 vendor-neutral, 9 law journal.
date_created VARCHAR Timestamp the publisher created the citation record.
date_modified VARCHAR Timestamp the publisher last modified the citation record.
dump_date VARCHAR The CourtListener bulk export the row was copied from (ISO date).