How can I search for null values or any value?

It's possibel to search CourtListener for results where a field is empty (also known as null) or where a field has any value at all, but you don't care what it is.

This syntax is slightly difficult, so it's not in our standard search documentation, and we do not guarantee to support it if we upgrade our system. This may make it unsuitable for search alerts, which persist long-term.

Imagine you want to search for cases in the RECAP Archive that are terminated and thus have a value in the date of termination field. The field for the date of case termination is dateTerminated, so the syntax you would use is:

_exists_:dateTerminated

For example, this query shows terminated cases in the Northern District of California.

You can flip this logic as well to find all the cases that have no value in the field by adding a minus sign:

-_exists_:dateTerminated

Note the minus sign at the beginning.

Here's an example of that query. Note that the absence of a value may mean that we just don't have it from the underlying source (in this case PACER), and does not necessarily mean the case has not been terminated.