Court Code Reference: How DocketLayer Identifies Courts
Every DocketLayer API request requires a court_code parameter that identifies the specific court to query. Court codes are short, lowercase string identifiers that follow consistent patterns by court type and jurisdiction. This reference explains how codes are structured, how to find the code for a specific court, and what the coverage field in court status responses means.
Federal Court Codes
Federal court codes follow a two-part pattern: a geographic prefix and a type suffix. Federal court records are accessed through PACER and CM/ECF; DocketLayer normalizes this into a consistent court_code identifier regardless of the underlying system.
District courts use a state abbreviation plus a directional or district qualifier. Examples: nysd (Southern District of New York), cand (Northern District of California), txwd (Western District of Texas), ilnd (Northern District of Illinois). Single-district states drop the directional: vtd (District of Vermont), nhd (District of New Hampshire).
Bankruptcy courts follow the same pattern with a b suffix: nysb (Southern District of New York Bankruptcy), canb (Northern District of California Bankruptcy), nmib (District of New Mexico Bankruptcy).
Courts of appeals use a circuit number: ca1 through ca11, plus cadc (D.C. Circuit) and cafc (Federal Circuit). The Second and Ninth Circuits operate on ACMS rather than CM/ECF; their codes are ca2 and ca9 respectively. The API handles both systems transparently.
Specialty federal courts: uscfc (U.S. Court of Federal Claims), cit (Court of International Trade).
State Court Codes
State court codes are less uniform than federal codes because each state has its own court system structure. The general pattern is a state abbreviation prefix followed by a court or county identifier.
For states with a single unified public portal, codes often follow a county or circuit pattern. Oklahoma uses county abbreviations mapped to OSCN's county parameter: ok_adair, ok_tulsa, ok_oklahoma. West Virginia uses county-level codes against the WVPASS portal: wv_berkeley, wv_kanawha, wv_cabell.
For states with specialized portals by court type, codes include a type segment. Georgia has portal-specific codes: ga_superior_cobb for the Cobb County Superior Court (Cobb's own portal), ga_superior_tyler_[county] for courts on the Tyler Technologies cloud portal.
The status endpoint returns the complete list of active court codes with their current coverage status. Do not hardcode court code lists — call GET /v2/status to enumerate available courts dynamically.
Canadian Court Codes
Canadian court codes do not follow a single prefix pattern. Federal and provincial codes are distinct.
Federal courts use short identifiers: fct (Federal Court of Canada), fca (Federal Court of Appeal), tcc (Tax Court of Canada).
Provincial and territorial superior courts use a province abbreviation followed by a court level identifier. Examples: on_sc (Ontario Superior Court of Justice), bc_sc (Supreme Court of British Columbia), bc_ca (Court of Appeal for British Columbia), ab_kb (Court of King's Bench of Alberta), mb_kb (Court of King's Bench of Manitoba), nb_kb (Court of King's Bench of New Brunswick), qc_cs (Cour supérieure du Québec), qc_ca (Cour d'appel du Québec).
Quebec courts return bilingual data — French and English versions of case metadata where available. The language field in court status responses indicates the primary language of source data. The Supreme Court of Canada is not in DocketLayer's coverage scope.
Looking Up Court Codes
The GET /v2/status endpoint returns the full court list. Each entry includes the court code, display name, jurisdiction, coverage status, refresh cadence, and the portal system used. Filter the response by jurisdiction or coverage to find the codes relevant to a specific query.
Use /v2/status to validate a court code before building a bulk query pipeline, or to check current coverage status before querying a court that may have been recently added. The case_id_format field shows the expected case number format for each court.
The Court Directory provides a browsable, searchable view of the same data — useful for looking up a specific court code by name or jurisdiction without writing a query.
The Coverage Field
Every court in the status response has a coverage field with one of three values. See coverage status for a full explanation of what each level means and how it affects query responses.
full — DocketLayer has active, tested access to this court. Queries return structured docket data. The majority of federal courts and active state courts are in this state.
partial — Coverage is active but limited. This typically means certain case types, date ranges, or document types are inaccessible due to portal restrictions. The court entry for a partial-coverage court includes a notes field describing what is excluded.
planned — The court is in the system and will be supported, but coverage is not yet active. Queries against these courts return 422. This status is used for courts where access is technically feasible but awaiting finalization — for example, courts requiring commercial data sharing agreements. Texas state courts are in this category pending OCA approval.