jonashertner/opencaselaw/research

Legal research with ocl

Use when asked a question of Swiss law that needs authorities: what the Federal Supreme Court or a cantonal court held, which statute article applies, what the practice is. Install: pipx install opencaselaw-cli (or uv tool install opencaselaw-cli). Every command prints JSON when piped; --fields keeps the keys you need; exit code 4 means something did not resolve, 3 means the service or network failed.

Steps

1. Frame the question as search terms in the language of the likely

decisions (German for most BGE, French for Romandie courts). Search: ocl decisions search '<terms>' --max-results 20 --format jsonl --fields decision_id,citation_string_de,decision_date,court (add --court bge, --language fr, --date-from as needed). A text search is one ranked window; total is a candidate pool, not a count.

1. Read before citing. For each candidate worth it:

ocl tool call get_regeste decision_id=<id> (BGE headnote) and ocl decisions passage <id> <number> for the considerations. Never summarise a decision from its title.

1. Follow the law: ocl tool call find_leading_cases query='<terms>',

ocl citations list <id> --direction incoming --limit 20 (who cites it later), ocl tool call find_relevant_erwaegung decision_id=<id> query='<terms>'. Statutes: ocl laws get OR --article 336 (--as-of YYYY-MM-DD for the text in force at a date; a text_status other than ok means no text was recovered). Practice and scholarship: ocl tool call search_practice, ocl tool call search_scholarship, ocl tool call search_commentaries.

1. Cite only through the service: ocl cite <reference> --pinpoint <n>

gives the string to copy verbatim (citation_string); an inline pinpoint in the reference is verified. Quote only what passage served, and keep the served wording.

1. Before answering, run the citation check on your own draft

(ocl citations resolve --input refs.jsonl --format jsonl) and the quotation check (ocl quotes check --input quotes.jsonl --format jsonl). Fix or drop anything that is not resolved / exact; report what you dropped.

1. Say what the tool established (existence, identity, wording) and what it

did not (legal support, whether a decision is still good law). Keep the evidence: ocl bundle create '<terms>' --max-results 10 --passage <n> --out evidence.

Rules

• Citation strings and passage text come from the service unchanged; never

compose a citation or edit a quotation.

• Never present a close_match or a service_candidate as the cited case.
• ocl tool list shows every server tool; ocl tool schema <name> its

arguments. ocl doctor checks the connection first when things fail.