US Statutes API: USC, CFR & State Codes
The complete US Code, the CFR, and every state and territory code (5M+ sections) through one self-serve API: REST, MCP or SQL. Every section cited and linked to its official source.
The hard way
Build the pipeline yourself
- ✗All 52 government sites, each in its own format
- ✗PDFs and XML with broken tables and footnotes
- ✗Section hierarchy, amendments, and metadata
- ✗A search index you build and keep in sync
- ✗Re-scrape it all, forever, as the law changes
Weeks of setup. Maintenance that never ends.
The API
Or make one call
- ✓Indexed and normalized to one schema
- ✓Cited, with a link to the official source
- ✓Relevance-ranked, filter by state or corpus
- ✓Refreshed on a per-source schedule
One API key. Live today.
We open-sourced the hard part: the scrapers
Clean, structured bulk access to the compiled state codes has never existed in the open. Open US Law publishes that missing layer and the scrapers that build it: every state statutory code plus the US Code, the CFR, regulations, constitutions, and court rules, normalized to JSONL from official government sources. Scripts are Apache-2.0; the compiled data is CC BY 4.0. Clone it to self-host, or use the hosted API below to skip the pipeline entirely.
- Sections of US primary law
- 5M+Sections of US primary law
- US jurisdictions: federal, 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico
- 53US jurisdictions: federal, 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico
- Indexed retrieval passages
- 19M+Indexed retrieval passages
The 12 endpoints you will use most, of 20.
Section lookup
/api/v1/us/statutes/resolveResolve a Bluebook citation straight to its section
/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}Get a section, citation, title, and hierarchy metadata
/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/bodyGet the full text of a section, HTML and plain text
/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/relatedGet the sections immediately before and after this one
/api/v1/us/statutes/sectionsBatch metadata for up to 50 sections in one call
Discover the corpus
Go deeper on a section
/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/changesGet this section's change history
/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/cited-byFind the sections that cite this one
/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/definitionsGet the defined terms that govern this section
/api/v1/us/statutes/section/{act_id}/cross-stateCompare this provision against other states
One request, cited results.
curl -X POST https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1/us/statutes/search \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $VAQUILL_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"query": "qualified immunity", "corpusType": "USC", "limit": 5}'{
"total": 3,
"creditsConsumed": 4,
"results": [
{
"actId": "USC_T6_C4_S1104",
"citation": "6 U.S.C. § 1104 (2024)",
"title": "Immunity for reports of suspected terrorist activity",
"corpusType": "USC",
"state": "federal",
"year": 2024,
"relevanceScore": 0.73,
"excerpt": "Any person who, in good faith...",
"displayPath": "Title 6 > Chapter 4 > § 1104",
"htmlUrl": "https://statutes-us.vaquill.ai/...htm",
"pdfUrl": "https://statutes-us.vaquill.ai/...pdf",
"externalUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/..."
}
]
}Everything the API covers
One schema over every layer of US primary law: 5M+ sections across every US jurisdiction, each cited and linked to its official source.
US Code sections
53 titles, weekly
CFR sections
49 active titles, daily
Federal Register rules
final + proposed, 1994 to present
Statutes at Large sections
federal law as enacted, 1789 to date
Statute compilation sections
2,556 acts, currency stated per document
Agency adjudication decisions
7 federal bodies, no good-law verdict
CFR annual edition sections
31 published editions of the same regulations, not extra breadth
Federal Register notices
curated 2.3% slice: notices acting on a rulemaking
State statute sections
all 52 jurisdictions
State regulation rules
all 52 jurisdictions
Executive orders
+ proclamations & memos
Agency guidance documents
53 named sources across 26 agencies
State constitution sections
51 jurisdictions
State court rules
46 jurisdictions
Federal Rules of Procedure
FRCP, FRCrP, FRE, FRAP, FRBP + SCOTUS Rules
State agency guidance (bulletins)
49 jurisdictions
US Constitution sections
articles + amendments
Federal: the US Code and CFR
The complete codified federal corpus, with in-force counts and historical (repealed, omitted, transferred) sections preserved for reproducible research.
| Corpus | Sections | In force | Titles |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Code (statutes) | 60,170 | 50,798 | 53 |
| CFR (regulations) | 222,430 | 221,871 | 49 |
| USC + CFR | 282,421 | 272,669 | 102 |
Bracketed entries are citation patterns, not placeholders: California, New York and Texas divide their statutes into subject-matter codes, so a citation names the subject (Cal. Penal Code, N.Y. Penal Law, Tex. Penal Code).
Plus the Federal Register (196,237 rules, final and proposed, 1994 to present), 3,777 executive orders, the US Constitution, the Federal Rules of Procedure, 97,025 agency guidance documents across 26 agencies, the US Sentencing Guidelines, and US tax treaties.
State: all 52 statute codes
Every state code in the same schema as federal. Scope a query to one jurisdiction with state: "tx", or resolve a citation like Tex. Penal Code § 19.02 straight to its section. Plus state regulations (1.46M+ rules, all 52 jurisdictions), state constitutions (51 jurisdictions), state court rules (46 jurisdictions), and state agency guidance / bulletins (49 jurisdictions).
| Code | Jurisdiction | Statute code |
|---|---|---|
| AL | Alabama | Ala. Code |
| AK | Alaska | Alaska Stat. |
| AZ | Arizona | Ariz. Rev. Stat. |
| AR | Arkansas | Ark. Code |
| CA | California | Cal. [Code] |
| CO | Colorado | Colo. Rev. Stat. |
| CT | Connecticut | Conn. Gen. Stat. |
| DE | Delaware | Del. Code |
| DC | District of Columbia | D.C. Code |
| FL | Florida | Fla. Stat. |
| GA | Georgia | Ga. Code |
| HI | Hawaii | Haw. Rev. Stat. |
| ID | Idaho | Idaho Code |
| IL | Illinois | Ill. Comp. Stat. |
| IN | Indiana | Ind. Code |
| IA | Iowa | Iowa Code |
| KS | Kansas | Kan. Stat. |
| KY | Kentucky | Ky. Rev. Stat. |
| LA | Louisiana | La. Rev. Stat. |
| ME | Maine | Me. Rev. Stat. |
| MD | Maryland | Md. Code |
| MA | Massachusetts | Mass. Gen. Laws |
| MI | Michigan | Mich. Comp. Laws |
| MN | Minnesota | Minn. Stat. |
| MS | Mississippi | Miss. Code |
| MO | Missouri | Mo. Rev. Stat. |
| MT | Montana | Mont. Code |
| NE | Nebraska | Neb. Rev. Stat. |
| NV | Nevada | Nev. Rev. Stat. |
| NH | New Hampshire | N.H. Rev. Stat. |
| NJ | New Jersey | N.J. Stat. |
| NM | New Mexico | N.M. Stat. |
| NY | New York | N.Y. [Cons. Laws] |
| NC | North Carolina | N.C. Gen. Stat. |
| ND | North Dakota | N.D. Cent. Code |
| OH | Ohio | Ohio Rev. Code |
| OK | Oklahoma | Okla. Stat. |
| OR | Oregon | Or. Rev. Stat. |
| PA | Pennsylvania | Pa. Cons. Stat. |
| PR | Puerto Rico | P.R. Laws Ann. |
| RI | Rhode Island | R.I. Gen. Laws |
| SC | South Carolina | S.C. Code |
| SD | South Dakota | S.D. Codified Laws |
| TN | Tennessee | Tenn. Code |
| TX | Texas | Tex. [Code] |
| UT | Utah | Utah Code |
| VT | Vermont | Vt. Stat. |
| VA | Virginia | Va. Code |
| WA | Washington | Wash. Rev. Code |
| WV | West Virginia | W. Va. Code |
| WI | Wisconsin | Wis. Stat. |
| WY | Wyoming | Wyo. Stat. |
Security & Compliance
Legal data demands serious security. Here is how we protect your queries and your clients' data.
- Bearer token auth
- Keys prefixed vq_key_, rotate any time from the dashboard.
- HTTPS only
- Encrypted in transit; plain HTTP is rejected.
- No query logging
- We never store your searches, only usage for billing.
- SOC 2 in progress
- Type II underway; trust docs on request.
- US data residency
- Servers and legal data stay on US infrastructure.
- IP whitelisting
- IP-based access restrictions on enterprise plans.
Working in legal aid or civil justice?
US primary law other than case law: statutes, regulations, constitutions, court rules, executive orders, agency guidance, and agency adjudications. Federal plus all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, about 5M+ sections. The coverage section above breaks it down corpus by corpus, and GET /api/v1/us/statutes/coverage returns the live numbers.
Stop building legal data pipelines.
The rest of the API surface
One corpus, several ways to reach it. Call the REST API, wire it into your agent over MCP, download the open dataset, or read the coverage in detail.
Run live requests from your dashboard and see the real response before you write a line of code.
Webhook or email the moment a jurisdiction or corpus you watch changes, down to the section.
Statute search + section lookup as native tools in Claude, Cursor, and VS Code.
The full corpus as Parquet on Hugging Face. Public-domain text, CC BY 4.0 compilation.
Endpoints, parameters, response schemas, and code samples.