The Docket
Cases in the federal courts where the government is being challenged, taken from each court's own electronic docket and from the opinions the courts publish. Narrow by state to see what is being argued where you live.
Look up verified official-capacity litigation by politician →
1,805 cases on file from 85 federal courts. Every line below is the clerk's own text.
Supreme Court→
Federal filings→
Morning court record→
Reading the docket…
Select any case to open its official record: the court's own docket, or the opinion as published on govinfo. Documents behind PACER are the court's, and carry the court's own charge.
Case captions and docket entries come from each court's own public CM/ECF feed, and older cases from the United States Courts Opinions collection that the Government Publishing Office maintains on govinfo, which holds a case only where a judge published a written opinion in it. Supreme Court decisions and the Court's own statement of what it held come from supremecourt.gov. Where a case cites an executive order, that citation was read from the court's published opinion on govinfo. Judicial opinions and docket entries are works of the United States government.
Where a caption names the President of the United States as a party, the row links the file of the person who held that office on the earliest date the record shows the case before the court. That link is this site's reading of the caption and that date, not the court's, and it is made only in a court whose feed or published opinions let this site follow a case to its end. Being named in a case brought against the office is not a finding about the person, and these cases are never added up into a number.
Cases brought by a named individual are not published here. Most are Social Security disability appeals, which are public record but set out one person's medical history under their own name, and naming them on this page would tell a reader nothing about federal policy.