Provenance
Data & Sources
JudicialFinder uses free, public-data sources only. Every source below is listed with its license and what it provides, and every page cites the source behind each fact.
Data last verified 2026-08-15.
| Source | What it provides | License | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| FJC Biographical Directory | The federal spine: every Article III judge since 1789, with appointments, seat IDs (succession), education, and career. | Public domain | In use |
| CourtListener / Free Law Project | The bankruptcy, magistrate, and state judges who are not in the FJC directory, plus Supreme Court opinion citation counts, all from the public-domain bulk data. | Public domain · FCRA notice | In use |
| State judicial directories | The current trial-court benches of the 24 states published from their own official directories (the Supreme Court of Ohio, the Texas OCA, New York’s OCA directory via its 2026 FOIL release, and 21 more). Each judge and court cites its own state’s directory. | Public records | In use |
| Supreme Court of the United States | Slip-opinion tables (OT2017–present): each opinion’s author, date, docket, and the Reporter of Decisions’ holding line, linking the official PDF. | Public domain | In use |
| Wikidata | Cross-identifiers (FJC, CourtListener, Ballotpedia) and portraits. | CC0 | In use |
| Congress.gov + U.S. Senate roll calls | Judicial nominations and confirmation votes, senator by senator → PolitiFinder cross-links. | Public domain | In use |
| Wikimedia Commons | License-clean portraits and their provenance metadata. | Per file (PD / CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA) | In use |
What we do not use. We do not scrape Ballotpedia, PACER, or any paid research tool (Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg, Trellis), and we do not republish encyclopedia prose. We extract facts from public records and write our own summaries. See our methodology for how sources are reconciled.
Informational only. Verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA): not for credit, employment, insurance, or tenant-screening use.