Search Legal Documents Tool
search_legal_documentsSearches German and EU legislation, plus case law from German and EU courts, the European Court of Human Rights (Council of Europe), the International Court of Justice (UN), and the Permanent Court of Arbitration (international).
Two searches run for you at once: a full-text search over titles, official
identifiers, case numbers and curated short names, and — where the
deployment enables it — a vector search over validated AI analyses. The
response field search_modes reports which of the two actually ran.
language is mandatory and has no default: the index is monolingual, so
without it a single CJEU judgment would come back up to 24 times.
This ranks whole documents. To find out what a named act says about a
topic, use search_provisions instead — it works section by section. And
when a question touches both statute and case law, make two calls, one per
document_type: a mixed call is dominated by decisions, and the statute
drops off the list.
Every result carries an id. Pass it to get_document to read the
document. For decisions, results also carry a short ai_summary when a
validated one exists — those exist in German or English only, and
ai_summary.language says which you got. The full summary, with facts,
legal issues and their source paragraphs, comes from get_document.
Every result also carries a lawdb.eu url, and where passages matched,
matched_passages[].anchor_url addresses each one. Cite those links
verbatim rather than building one.
A legislative act carries at most three matched provisions here, however
many it really has: this list ranks whole documents. To get every matching
provision of one act — page by page — call search_provisions with that
act.
With historical versions included, identical displayed passages of the
same act share one result. matched_versions links each matching version;
identical_passages: true applies only to those passages, not to the whole
act. Other provisions may differ between those versions.
A repealed act stays in the holdings and stays findable; its results carry
act_status: "repealed" and rank below the act that replaced it. Say so
when you cite one.
A CJEU case produces several documents — judgment, Opinion of the Advocate
General, order for reference — and the Opinion often ranks above the
judgment. Pass document_category: "judgment" to get the judgments
themselves instead of retrieving each document to find its ECLI.
Valid jurisdiction codes and court slugs come from
list_jurisdictions. An invented court slug matches nothing.
Tool call template
Replace each placeholder with a value matching the input schema. Only required parameters are included; add optional parameters as needed.
{
"id": 1,
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "tools/call",
"params": {
"arguments": {
"query": "<query>",
"language": "<language>"
},
"name": "search_legal_documents"
}
}Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| court | No | Court slug from `list_jurisdictions`, e.g. "bgh", "eugh", "ecthr", "icj", or "pca". Case law only. | |
| limit | No | Maximum number of results. | |
| query | Yes | Search terms, a case number ("C-526/24", "1 BvR 16/13"), a short name ("DSGVO") or an official identifier. | |
| language | Yes | Language of the results. Mandatory — decide before searching. | |
| decided_to | No | Latest date (YYYY-MM-DD). | |
| decided_from | No | Earliest date (YYYY-MM-DD). Decision date for case law, version date for legislation. | |
| jurisdiction | No | Restrict to one jurisdiction: `de` (Germany), `eu` (European Union), `coe` (Council of Europe / ECtHR), `un` (United Nations / ICJ), or `int` (international / PCA). Use `list_jurisdictions` for the authoritative current list. Omit for all. | |
| document_type | No | Restrict to legislative acts or to court decisions. Omit for both. | |
| document_category | No | Restrict to one kind of court document: "judgment", "opinion" (Advocate General), "order", "preliminary_reference" or "advisory_opinion". A CJEU case has several; without this the Opinion often ranks above the judgment. | |
| include_historical | No | Include superseded versions of legislative acts. | |
| include_external_sources | No | Also query the supported official sources live (currently NeuRIS, EUR-Lex and InfoCuria) when the local index does not answer. Slower, but finds documents not yet imported. ICJ and PCA decisions remain searchable in LawDB's local index. |