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court_parentheticals

Court opinion parentheticals

Short summaries of a decision written by the courts that later cite it, the text in parentheses after a citation, such as "(holding that an agency must explain a change in position)". described_opinion_id is the opinion summarized and describing_opinion_id the one that wrote it; join either to court_opinions.opinion_id to reach its decision. score is the publisher's estimate of how descriptive the text is. Rebuilt whole from each quarterly export. All columns are VARCHAR.

Coverage. Not a range. The complete 2026-06-30 CourtListener parentheticals export, none with empty text; some have no group. Described and describing opinion 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 every described opinion id and all but 618 describing ids resolved through court_opinions of the same edition. The text is the citing court's own words, extracted automatically by the publisher, so it can describe a holding, a fact or a procedural point, and score is a model estimate, not a review. Several parentheticals can summarize the same point; group_id links those the publisher grouped.

  • Parquet file: court_parentheticals.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
parenthetical_id VARCHAR CourtListener parenthetical ID. Primary key within one export.
described_opinion_id VARCHAR CourtListener opinion ID of the opinion the parenthetical summarizes. Joins court_opinions.opinion_id.
describing_opinion_id VARCHAR CourtListener opinion ID of the opinion that wrote the parenthetical. Joins court_opinions.opinion_id.
text VARCHAR The parenthetical as the describing opinion wrote it.
score VARCHAR Publisher's 0-to-1 estimate of how descriptive the text is, as text.
group_id VARCHAR Publisher's group of parentheticals making the same point; NULL when ungrouped.
dump_date VARCHAR The CourtListener bulk export the row was copied from (ISO date).