court_dockets

One row per federal court docket challenging agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, ingested from the CourtListener v4 search API (courtlistener.com, RECAP dockets with nature-of-suit 899) by build_courtlistener. When an agency finalizes a rule it is frequently sued; these are those suits — the litigation counterpart to the rulemakings in dockets/documents. There is no machine RIN/FR key on a court docket, so it links to the corpus by name and topic: the defendant agency appears in case_name and parties_json (joinable by name to agency_stats / the FR agency_slugs), and cause names the statute invoked. Primary / dedup key is cl_docket_id. All columns are stored as VARCHAR; array fields are JSON strings.

• Parquet file: court_dockets.parquet
• Queryable via MCP query_sql: Yes

Column	Type	Description
cl_docket_id	VARCHAR	CourtListener docket id (e.g. 73613631). Primary key / dedup key. Distinct from the regulations.gov docket_id.
case_name	VARCHAR	Short case name (e.g. HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES). Names the defendant agency.
case_name_full	VARCHAR	Full case caption when available; often blank.
court_id	VARCHAR	CourtListener court identifier (e.g. dcd D.D.C., cadc D.C. Circuit, akd D. Alaska).
court	VARCHAR	Human-readable court name (e.g. District Court, District of Columbia).
court_citation_string	VARCHAR	Court citation abbreviation (e.g. D.D.C.).
docket_number	VARCHAR	Court docket number (e.g. 1:26-cv-02460).
date_filed	VARCHAR	Date the case was filed (ISO 8601 string). Sort key and incremental watermark.
date_terminated	VARCHAR	Date the case was terminated, if closed (ISO 8601 string). Null for pending cases.
date_argued	VARCHAR	Date of oral argument, if any (ISO 8601 string). Often null.
nature_of_suit	VARCHAR	Nature-of-suit label; scoped to 899 Other Statutes: Administrative Procedures Act/Review or Appeal of Agency Decision.
cause	VARCHAR	Statutory cause of action as recorded in PACER (e.g. 05:551 Administrative Procedure Act).
jurisdiction_type	VARCHAR	Basis of federal jurisdiction (e.g. U.S. Government Defendant).
jury_demand	VARCHAR	Jury demand recorded on the docket (e.g. None).
assigned_to	VARCHAR	Name of the judge assigned to the case.
referred_to	VARCHAR	Name of the magistrate/referral judge, if any. Often null.
parties_json	VARCHAR	JSON array of party names on the docket (plaintiffs and defendants, including the defendant agency).
attorneys_json	VARCHAR	JSON array of attorney names appearing on the docket.
firms_json	VARCHAR	JSON array of law-firm / legal-organization names appearing on the docket.
pacer_case_id	VARCHAR	PACER case id for the docket in its court's CM/ECF system.
date_created	VARCHAR	Timestamp CourtListener first indexed the docket (ISO 8601 string, from the search-result meta.date_created).
absolute_url	VARCHAR	Absolute URL of the docket page on courtlistener.com.