Citation-graph neighbors
citationsGiven one opinion id, lists the cases it cites (direction=authorities) or the cases that cite it (direction=cited_by). Textual reference only: an edge means one opinion’s text names the other; it is not treatment, agreement, validity or "good law", and not a Shepard’s or KeyCite result. At most 1000 references are examined; those resolving to a loaded case are shown (most-cited first), the rest are counted in out_of_corpus_count, and examined_capped=true marks a floor. depth is how often the citing text names the case, not importance. References are per opinion: same_case_opinions gives each opinion of a record its own count and most_references_on names one carrying more (Miranda v. Arizona: record 107252’s combined text 49; lead opinion 9423233, 57,482). also_carried_by names other records sharing the reporter citation, each with its own count; counts are never pooled. The reference table misses citations in the stored text: 22.7% of references on a preregistered sample had no edge (95% interval 18.9-27.0%, n=405), concentrated in some cases, so a thin cited_by list is not evidence a case is rarely cited. with_passages=true (cited_by only) adds citing_passage, the citing court’s own sentence copied verbatim, found only where the citing opinion repeats the reporter citation (first occurrence; at most 10 opinions a request), with passage_note and passage_error. Case law in this mirror ends 2026-09-30 (exact scan of all 10,174,547 case records): a thin or empty result for recent authority means the collection ends there, not that no such case exists. Every response carries a "note" and a coverage_note. The sources tool returns this tool’s full coverage statement.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| id | Yes | seed OPINION id (from a search/fts/semantic/similar result opinion_id) | |
| limit | No | max in-corpus results, 1-50 (default 25) | |
| direction | No | authorities = cases THIS opinion cites; cited_by = cases that cite THIS one (default cited_by) | |
| with_passages | No | cited_by only: also return each citing court's verbatim sentence around the citation (citing_passage). Adds passage_note, passages_scanned, passages_found, and passage_error when the pass fails or the direction does not support it |