Datasets:
id stringlengths 16 16 | doc_type stringclasses 1
value | jurisdiction stringclasses 1
value | title stringlengths 6 129 | text stringlengths 2 636k | source stringlengths 37 117 | license stringclasses 1
value | retrieved_at timestamp[s]date 2026-06-30 00:00:00 2026-09-14 00:00:00 | citation stringclasses 1
value | court stringclasses 4
values | date timestamp[s]date 1779-08-15 00:00:00 2026-09-08 00:00:00 | extra dict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
29bbbeb1108d423b | opinion | va | Rich v. Commonwealth | PRESENT: All the Justices
RIANA MICHELLE RICH
OPINION BY
v. Record No. 151841 JUSTICE CLEO E. POWELL
December 15, 2016
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4107512 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-va | 2016-12-15T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4107512",
"cluster_id": "4330251",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
4caabbcddbd34c3e | opinion | va | McGrath v. Dockendorf | PRESENT: All the Justices
JULIA V. McGRATH
OPINION BY
v. Record No. 160262 JUSTICE STEPHEN R. McCULLOUGH
December 15, 2016
ETHAN L. DOCKENDORF
FROM T... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4107513 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-va | 2016-12-15T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4107513",
"cluster_id": "4330252",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
eed6ee7483f4bf84 | opinion | va | In re: Vauter | PRESENT: All the Justices
IN RE: REBECCA VAUTER, DIRECTOR,
CENTRAL STATE HOSPITAL OPINION BY
JUSTICE S. BERNARD GOODWYN
Record No. 151723 December 15, 2016
... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4107515 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-va | 2016-12-15T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4107515",
"cluster_id": "4330254",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
7299eef9764a7f68 | opinion | va | Commonwealth v. Lambert | PRESENT: Lemons, C.J., Goodwyn, Mims, McClanahan, Powell, and Kelsey, JJ., and Lacy,
S.J.
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
OPINION BY
v. Record No. 160132 CHIEF JUSTICE DONALD W. LEMONS
... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4107516 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-va | 2016-12-15T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4107516",
"cluster_id": "4330255",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
57c31450826eadba | opinion | va | Karen Rompalo v. Commonwealth of Virginia | COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Judges Petty, AtLee and Senior Judge Annunziata
Argued by teleconference
PUBLISHED
KAREN ROMPALO
OPINION BY
... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4538185 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-vactapp | 2020-06-02T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4538185",
"cluster_id": "4757838",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
771309169b367337 | opinion | va | Al Martino Williams v. Commonwealth of Virginia | COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Judges Humphreys, Huff and Malveaux
UNPUBLISHED
Argued by teleconference
AL MARTINO WILLIAMS
MEMORANDUM OPINION*... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4538183 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-vactapp | 2020-06-02T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4538183",
"cluster_id": "4757836",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
aa9c46d7aa90fba2 | opinion | va | Christian Lindale Stevenson v. Commonwealth of Virginia | COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Chief Judge Decker, Judges Malveaux and Athey
UNPUBLISHED
Argued by videoconference
CHRISTIAN LINDALE STEVENSON
ME... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4635620 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-vactapp | 2020-11-24T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4635620",
"cluster_id": "4831841",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
4abccb0545675d19 | opinion | va | Troy McGowan v. Commonwealth of Virginia | COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Chief Judge Decker, Judge Humphreys and Senior Judge Annunziata
Argued by videoconference
PUBLISHED
TROY McGOWAN
OPIN... | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4635621 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-vactapp | 2020-11-24T00:00:00 | {
"cl_opinion_id": "4635621",
"cluster_id": "4831842",
"opinion_type": "010combined",
"text_kind": "plain_text",
"source_label": "courtlistener"
} | |
275630799490d18d | opinion | va | Sheehy v. Williams | "PRESENT: All the Justices\n\nKERRY ANN SHEEHY\n (...TRUNCATED) | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/4637217 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-va | 2020-11-25T00:00:00 | {"cl_opinion_id":"4637217","cluster_id":"4833438","opinion_type":"010combined","text_kind":"plain_te(...TRUNCATED) | |
05c38415e2f6be97 | opinion | va | Turner v. Commonwealth | " \n 680 S.E.2d 312 (2009) \n 54 Va. App. 458 \n Dustin Allen TURNER, Petitioner, \nv. (...TRUNCATED) | cl-bulk://2026-06-30/opinions/1286799 | public-domain-edict-of-government | 2026-06-30T00:00:00 | va-vactapp | 2009-08-04T00:00:00 | {"cl_opinion_id":"1286799","cluster_id":"1286799","opinion_type":"010combined","text_kind":"html_wit(...TRUNCATED) |
Virginia Case Law
Source & credit — Free Law Project / CourtListener
Every opinion in this dataset comes from the Free Law Project / CourtListener bulk export of 2026-06-30 (10,798,347 opinions). CourtListener gathered, cleaned, deduplicated and published that record; Free Law Project — the 501(c)(3) non-profit behind it, building free public access to American law since 2010 — pays for it. We sliced and reformatted; they did the hard part. Go to the source: https://www.courtlistener.com.
Free Law Project is a non-profit, and it is worth supporting: https://free.law/donate/. If this data is useful to you, credit Free Law Project and CourtListener too, and consider going straight to the source: CourtListener runs its own API and MCP server.
Full text of 54,075 Virginia appellate opinion documents from the public record. The base
slice is 54,048 documents from the Free Law Project / CourtListener bulk export of 2026-06-30.
data/va-delta-2026-06-23-to-2026-09-08.jsonl.gz ADDS 27 opinions filed after that snapshot,
harvested directly from CourtListener's live search API and its own object storage (never a state
court's own search portal, several of which disallow automated access) — added 2026-09-14.
Court coverage (2 court ids, explicit allowlist — never prefix-matched):
va, vactapp.
Lead opinions and separate opinions; documents under 1 characters excluded.
Slice sha256 8fcf1c833daeccadd8c383082c70911a7aab676aebe3518c1ffb2e7271d1a140 (also in slice.manifest.json).
Composition
Measured on this exact slice: 49,456 documents (91.5%) carry 2,000+
characters of text, 3,892 (7.2%) carry 200-1,999, and 700
(1.3%) are under 200 characters. The short ones are real records, not errors: certiorari
denials, one-line orders, and judgment entries. They are kept deliberately (min_chars = 1)
so this is the complete public record rather than a filtered subset. Filter on len(text) if you want
only substantive opinions.
Format
Rows follow docketx record v1 (one opinion per line): id, doc_type, jurisdiction, title,
text, source, license, retrieved_at, plus citation, court, date, and extra
(CourtListener opinion/cluster ids, opinion type). The same format is used across every
docketx dataset.
Provenance and license
Judicial opinions are edicts of government: uncopyrightable works of the public domain (Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888); Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 590 U.S. 255 (2020)). This packaging is released under CC0 1.0. Source: CourtListener bulk export (2026-06-30), Free Law Project — https://free.law. This dataset redistributes public-domain court text; it adds no annotation and asserts no rights.
Load it
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("docketx/us-caselaw-va")
Part of the DocketRouter legal corpora: https://huggingface.co/docketx
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