what am I missing searching for amicus filed before a date

[hesco]

Running this query I hope to see amicus briefs filed by the aclu before 9-11.

curl -o search-aclu-amicus-2011.json https://www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=amicus+%22American+Civil+Liberties+Union%22&date_created__lte=2001-09-11&page=1 

Instead I see this:

jq '.results[].dateFiled' search-aclu-amicus-2011.json 
"2015-05-07"
"2016-05-13"
"2014-02-11"
"2011-03-28"
"2016-03-10"
"2009-08-21"
"2010-06-09"
"2012-05-08"
"2008-07-22"
"2006-07-14"
"2010-01-14"
"2011-02-02"
"2013-01-15"
"2006-03-17"
"2003-03-06"
"2004-05-03"
"2000-07-06"
"2005-06-27"
"2000-06-22"
"2003-12-18"

what might I be missing here, please.

[mlissner]

Hi, your question should be well-answered by the search API documentation, so I ask this sincerely, and with a bit out of desperation: Did you read the documentation before asking this question?

https://www.courtlistener.com/help/api/rest/v4/search/

Can you please let me know? It would be quite helpful to us.

Thank you.

[hesco]

Yes, in fact, I had read that page and others on your site, seeking guidance on how to craft this query.

I also tested this:
https://www.courtlistener.com/help/search-operators/#date-queries

in fact multiple variations on this:
&dateFiled="[1791-01-01 TO 2001-11-09]"&order_by=dateField&

without changing the results. None of items returned had been filed before 2001. The order_by argument is not respected.

If you can help me sort out how to perform such a query successfully, I'd be happy to offer a patch to your documentation to help the next person trying to do something similar.

Thanks.

[hesco]

I've read a couple of times about the /search target being distinct from the other API's. I'm starting over to build a query of your database which makes sense. Looking at the pacer interface next. Thanks. But the offer holds, about the documentation contribution, to make explicit anything which I'm missing at the moment.

[ERosendo]

hi! @hesco, Have you tried something like this?

https://www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?type=r&q=dateFiled%3A%5B1791-01-01%20TO%202001-09-11%5D%20amicus%20%22American%20Civil%20Liberties%20Union%22&order_by=dateFiled%20asc

at the end of the date-queries section, there’s a link that shows an example of using a range filter with the dateFiled field. The important detail is that the date range is not a standalone query parameter, it has to be included as part of the q parameter itself.

In the example above, the query should return cases filed before September 11, 2001. In your earlier message you mentioned November 9 (2001-11-09) if that’s the date you’re targeting, you’ll want to adjust the range accordingly. The expected format for date ranges is YYYY-MM-DD.

Hope this helps.

[mlissner]

Thanks @ERosendo. @hesco, thanks for persevering. If there are tweaks to the docs that you think would help others in the future, we'd be hugely appreciative. I was thinking about this yesterday and maybe one thing we can do is put a note into New Discussion form that says:

[ ] If my question is answered, I agree to suggest fixes to the documentation that would have helped me, and I will attempt to make those fixes if I am able.

A bit wordy, but it feels like it could be a nice exchange of assistance to improve the docs while helping folks. A thought!

[hesco]

First thing I'd want to include would be a brief couple of paragraphs on importance of encoding the url with html entities. Even so, the sample provided is not getting me the intended results.

I tried this:

curl -o search-aclu-amicus-test.json https://www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?type=r&q=dateFiled%3A%5B1791-01-01%20TO%202001-09-11%5D%20amicus%20%22American%20Civil%20Liberties%20Union%22&order_by=dateFiled%20asc

and this:

curl -o search-aclu-amicus-test.json https://www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?type=r&q=dateFiled%3A%5B1791-01-01%20TO%202001-09-11%5D%20amicus%20%22American%20Civil%20Liberties%20Union%22&order_by=-dateFiled

Either way, the results look like this:

$ jq '.results[].dateFiled' search-aclu-amicus-test.json | sort | uniq -c 
      1 "2026-01-21"
     19 "2026-01-25"

These queries are not respecting my intended data constraints. Nor do I seem to be able to reverse the sort order. Still looking for a clue.

[mlissner]

Be sure to use the front end to figure it out. Here's your query on the front end:

https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=dateFiled%3A%5B1791-01-01%20TO%202001-09-11%5D%20amicus%20%22American%20Civil%20Liberties%20Union%22&type=r&order_by=dateFiled%20desc

You can tweak the filters, query, and ordering that way, then make it an API request.

When I run this, the results look fine to me:

↪ curl 'https://www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?type=r&q=dateFiled%3A%5B1791-01-01%20TO%202001-09-11%5D%20amicus%20%22American%20Civil%20Liberties%20Union%22&order_by=dateFiled%20asc' | jq '.results[].dateFiled' | sort | uniq -c
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   99k  100   99k    0     0   277k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  278k
      1 "1975-12-09"
      1 "1977-01-14"
      1 "1980-09-24"
      1 "1985-07-11"
      1 "1988-05-19"
      1 "1990-04-23"
      1 "1991-06-03"
      1 "1991-06-27"
      1 "1992-02-20"
      1 "1992-05-22"
      1 "1993-09-27"
      1 "1995-04-25"
      1 "1995-10-26"
      1 "1997-01-17"
      1 "1997-10-09"
      1 "1998-01-09"
      1 "1998-06-26"
      1 "1998-07-16"
      1 "1998-10-22"
      1 "1999-03-23"

Just be careful because there's dateFiled (which applies to the case), and entry_date_filed (which applies to the entries).

[hesco]

Every attempt to test this over the past two or three hours has generated a response like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<HTML><HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<TITLE>ERROR: The request could not be satisfied</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>403 ERROR</H1>
<H2>The request could not be satisfied.</H2>
<HR noshade size="1px">
Request blocked.
We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
<BR clear="all">
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
<BR clear="all">
<HR noshade size="1px">
<PRE>
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: 0n6ofQreUR_yK5aRT_Eauu8vyHOdbTAD094dWo_71Ydq6FrIZftU8A==
</PRE>
<ADDRESS>
</ADDRESS>
</BODY></HTML>

will try again in the morning.

[hesco]

attempts to add a User-Agent header are failing to change the outcome. I'm wondering if this a quota issue? Before trying out the API in one-off queries, I made the mistake of partially debugging trying out code offered by AI, which ran bulk queries, likely exhausting my quota before I got any real work done (the program would always crash before savings its data to persistent storage at the very end). Is this what that would look like?

[hesco]

never mind, I see somehow I was using the wrong path to the api target. Adding this: /api/rest/v4/search/ puts me back in business.

[carrierone]

You're searching for amicus briefs filed by the ACLU before September 11, 2001, but your results show filings after that date. Try adjusting your query to include earlier years or use different keywords if needed. Here’s how you can refine your search:

curl -o search-aclu-amicus-before9-11.json https://www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=amicus+%22American+Civil+Liberties+Union%22&date_created__gte=2001-09-12&page=1

This URL will help you find amicus briefs filed on or after September 12, 2001. — Justin