search_statutes
Search U.S. statutes by citation or natural-language text. Filter by jurisdiction and limit results to find relevant sections.
Instructions
Search the Freecase statute corpus by citation or natural-language text.
Requires a Freecase connector key in the FREECASE_MCP_KEY environment variable; without one, this tool returns an error explaining how to set it.
Returns the query echoed back, counts, and a results array. Each
result mirrors the Freecase API fields exactly (section_id,
canonical_citation, jurisdiction, code_family, heading, status, snippet,
match_type). Exact-citation hits are pinned above full-text hits, and current
law floats above repealed/renumbered sections. Pass a result's section_id
to get_statute to read the full section text.
Args: q: The search query (a citation or text — forwarded unchanged). jurisdiction: Statute jurisdiction to search within. limit: Maximum number of results (1-100; default 25).
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| q | Yes | The search query, forwarded to Freecase as-is: a statute citation (e.g. '625 ILCS 5/11-501') or natural-language text. Freecase handles citation vs. full-text detection server-side. | |
| limit | No | Maximum results to return (1-100). Defaults to 25. | |
| jurisdiction | No | Statute jurisdiction to search. 'all' or a state/federal code: il, us, mn, fl, nm, wi, ar, ga, ky, me, nc, nd, ri, tn, vt, wy (the launched set). If a jurisdiction is not yet launched, Freecase returns a message listing the ones that are. | all |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No arguments | |||