MCP for CourtListener: US federal and state opinions, dockets, judges, plus eCFR regulations.
CourtListener MCP server is a hosted integration for AI assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol. MCP for CourtListener: US federal and state opinions, dockets, judges, plus eCFR regulations.
Use it with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, ChatGPT Desktop, or any MCP-compatible client.
Once CourtListener is connected, these are the calls the assistant has available:
Group — ToolsCitation — citation_lookup_citation, citation_batch_lookup_citations, citation_verify_citation_format, citation_parse_citation_with_citeurlSystem — statusCursor — The Cursor tool exposed by this serverBeing a remote server, there is no local install. You register the endpoint with your client, authorise it once, and the tools appear.
You will need 4 environment variables: COURT_LISTENER_API_KEY, YOUR_COURTLISTENER_TOKEN, COURTLISTENER_BASE_URL, ECFR_BASE_URL. The server will not start without them, which is usually why the tools fail to appear on a first run. Keep credentials in your client's env block or a secrets manager rather than in a file you might commit.
Among the developer tooling options, the useful question is rarely "what can it do" but "what does it cost you to run" — permissions, credentials, and how much of your context its toolset consumes. CourtListener's toolset — Group, Citation, System and 1 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by Vaquill-AI; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.
SyncDev reviews every entry in this directory against the project's own documentation before publishing, and revisits them as servers change.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Group | Tools |
| Citation | citation_lookup_citation, citation_batch_lookup_citations, citation_verify_citation_format, citation_parse_citation_with_citeurl, citation_extract_citations_from_text, citation_enhanced_citation_lookup |
| System | status |
| Cursor | The Cursor tool exposed by this server. |
{
"mcpServers": {
"courtlistener": {
"url": "https://courtlistener-mcp.vaquill.ai/mcp/",
"headers": {
"X-CourtListener-Token": "YOUR_COURTLISTENER_TOKEN"
}
}
}
}Configuration as documented by the project. Restart the client after saving.
| Variable | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| COURT_LISTENER_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| YOUR_COURTLISTENER_TOKEN | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| COURTLISTENER_BASE_URL | Endpoint or connection string the server talks to. | Yes |
| ECFR_BASE_URL | Endpoint or connection string the server talks to. | Yes |
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