Why are some search results repeated?

This can happen for several reasons, depending on the type of data you are searching.

Case Law

In the case law database, search results can appear repeated for two reasons. First, to ensure our system is comprehensive, we acquire and merge data from multiple sources including scraping decisions from court websites, book scanning, and data contributions.

Often these sources contain overlap that we automatically merge, but if one contains different or better metadata, we put both in the database until it can be merged more carefully.

The second reason we may have multiple copies of a decision is that CourtListener uses an automatic process to find and download opinions from court websites. This ensures our collection is rapidly updated as case law is published, but if a court posts multiple versions of a decision, we may obtain them all.

Such versions are typically for minor typos, but some revisions are more substantive, so we maintain an archive of all of the revisions we encounter.

RECAP Archive

The way the RECAP Archive is organized differs from the PACER system. In multi-defendant criminal cases, this results in one docket per defendant instead of sub-dockets like in PACER. This issue has it’s own page.