Search the text of the law
law_searchRead-onlyIdempotent
Search original law by topic, question, or citation. Exact citations resolve directly. Scoped by jurisdiction or source ids (e.g. us, us-tx; us-cfr scopes to the CFR alone, us covers both the US Code and the CFR) or by an address (the address is resolved first, then the search covers exactly its stack's hosted sources). Results are verbatim snippets with citation, official source URL, retrieval time, and a current-through or vintage label adjacent to every snippet; a hit whose source has fallen behind its upstream carries stale:true. Vintage-labeled text is a dated snapshot, not current law. Requested ids we do not host are named in the response note; law_coverage lists what is hosted.
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| q | Yes | Topic, question, or citation | |
| mode | No | auto combines word and semantic retrieval when available; keyword avoids model inference. | |
| limit | No | ||
| offset | No | ||
| address | No | One-line street address to auto-scope the search; pass this or jurisdictions, not both | |
| sources | No | Exact comma-separated source IDs; us = US Code only here. Use instead of jurisdictions/address. | |
| include_text | No | Include full text for up to this many top results (0 by default; sections over 64KB require get). | |
| jurisdictions | No | Comma-separated jurisdiction or source ids from law_coverage, e.g. us,us-tx (us-cfr = CFR only) |