A description of the fields within the JSON file for each case.
- Case Name
- Case Number
- Date Published
- Is Published?
- Court Name
- Court Location
- Author
- Outcome
- Parties
- Judges
- Attorneys
- Type of Case
- Cited Laws
- Cited Cases
- Decision Text
Saint Paul Holmes v. John Doe
name
string
yes
This will generally just be the names of the two parties, but not always.
981428
number
string
yes
The format of this varies enormously between courts.
1999-04-16
date_published
date
yes
Sometimes there are multiple dates, such as when a case is revised. Noah is evaluating. Other fields include the date that the decision was published in a law journal (with no other date provided) and the date that a decision was revised.
true
is_published
boolean
yes
There are two kinds of decisions: "published" and "unpublished." The term doesn't refer to whether the decisions are written and appear online, but instead whether they are to be considered as a source of precedent or not. The default state of an decision is published, but it is important to be able to store if an opinion is unpublished.
Supreme Court of Virginia
court
string
yes
Richmond
court_location
string
no
While this is unstructured text, it ought to be a placename, and may be geocodable.
Charles L. McCormick, III
author
string
no
This is probably the name of one the judges who heard the case, but theoretically could be somebody else.
Affirmed
outcome
unknown
no
It's not yet clear what this is going to look like. Noah should have some ideas about this.
array( "plaintiff" => "Saint Paul Holmes",
"defendant" => "John Doe")
parties
indexed array
yes
Given the nature of appeals (the role of the parties depends on who appeals, so it can reverse along the way), is there even value in storing whether somebody is the plaintiff or the defendant?
array("Charles L. McCormick, III")
judges
array
no
In a jury trial of an automobile accident liability claim, the trial court properly permitted the introduction of expert testimony concerning the relationship between tire tread depth and hydroplaning by a motor vehicle. The judgment is affirmed.
summary
string
no
Lee’s expert testimony was appropriate to aid the jury in putting this factual evidence into an appropriate context from which the jury could draw its own conclusions.
key_sentence
string
no
This key sentence is extracted via NLP.
array( "plaintiff" => "Lionel Hutz, Esq.",
"defendant" => "Miguel Sanchez")
attorneys
indexed array
no
Noah is evaluating the viability of IDing the party whom each attorney represents.
Might these actually be nested arrays? Often there will be more than one attorney for a party. Do we want to represent each one of those attorney as their own element in an array, or just make it one long string for each party?
civil
type
enum: civil or criminal
yes
array( "38.2-2206",
"46.2-1043",
"8.01-401.3")
cited_laws
array
no
Some laws are cited repeatedly. Do we want to store a representation of the unique laws that were cited, or do we want to store a representation of all citations? That is, are we telling people that § 38.2-2206 was cited 3 times, or just that it was cited at all?
unclear—working on this
cited cases
indexed array
no
Some cases are cited repeatedly. See Cited Laws for the ramifications of this.
array( 'format' => 'pdf', url => 'http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1981428.pdf',
'format' => 'txt', url => '/rulings/1981428.txt')
text
array
yes
This does not store the actual text, but just a link the text in its various formats.