---
license: cc0-1.0
language:
- en
task_categories:
- text-retrieval
- text-generation
size_categories:
- 100K<n<1M
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files: data/*.jsonl.gz
tags:
- legal
- law
- caselaw
- washington
- us-law
- state-law
- court-opinions
- public-domain
- rag
- retrieval
- legal-nlp
- legal-research
pretty_name: Washington Case Law
---

# Washington Case Law

Full text of 150,274 Washington appellate opinion documents from the public record. The base
slice is 150,239 documents from the Free Law Project / CourtListener bulk export of 2026-06-30.
`data/wa-delta-2026-06-29-to-2026-09-11.jsonl.gz` ADDS 35 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 (3 court ids, explicit allowlist — never prefix-matched):
`wash`, `washctapp`, `washterr`.

Lead opinions and separate opinions; documents under 1 characters excluded.
Slice sha256 `bbeef8b9e605cf2479a33dfb29b0d98c005ed657f6099a3d2ad9347e82b2a5fe` (also in `slice.manifest.json`).

## Composition

Measured on this exact slice: **91,345** documents (60.8%) carry 2,000+
characters of text, 45,663 (30.4%) carry 200-1,999, and 13,231
(8.8%) 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

```python
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("docketx/us-caselaw-wa")
```

Part of the DocketRouter legal corpora: https://huggingface.co/docketx