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The API answers one question at a time. For the corpus itself, use the bulk files. Every dated snapshot ships as Parquet in a public object store. You can query it where it sits, load it into your own warehouse, or download all of it and run without calling us again.
That query reads a remote Parquet file over HTTPS and returns in well under a second. The object store serves range requests, so DuckDB fetches only the column chunks it needs rather than the file.

What ships

308 Parquet files

One file per jurisdiction and corpus, so you can take only the slice you need: us_ak_constitutions.parquet, us_tx_statutes.parquet, and so on.

One combined tarball

open-us-law-v2026.09.1-parquet.tar, about 6.9 GB, when you would rather fetch once and unpack locally.

A manifest with checksums

index.json lists every file with its byte size, SHA-256 and URL, so you can verify an unattended sync.

Dated snapshots

Versions are immutable. Pin v2026.09.1 and your results stay reproducible when the next snapshot lands.

Schema

Every Parquet file carries the same 27 columns. The 24 below are the long-standing ones; official_status, currency_note (both VARCHAR) and adopting_citations (VARCHAR[]) are newer and are null for most rows.
This is the bulk schema. The REST API returns a richer object with amendment history, prior effective dates and format mirrors. See Response fields.

Load it into your own database

The vector index

The corpus is also held as an embedded, chunked retrieval index. Direct access to that index is available under a data license, which saves you the compute of re-embedding several million sections yourself. Talk to us at contact@vaquill.ai about scope.

What this is not

We do not operate a hosted replica for you, and there is no connection string to rent. You take a copy and run it on your own infrastructure. The copy is yours and keeps working even if we stop operating.

License

The legal text is public domain under the government edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 590 U.S. 255 (2020)). Our compilation, the schema, citations, hierarchy and cross-references, is CC BY-NC 4.0 from snapshot v2026.09 (earlier snapshots were released under CC BY 4.0 and stay that way). Commercial use of the compilation needs a separate license from us. The ingestion pipelines are Apache-2.0. Attribute as “Open US Law by Vaquill AI, CC BY-NC 4.0”.
The free snapshot and a paid bulk license are licensed differently. Anything you take from the public object store is yours under the license it was published with: CC BY 4.0 for snapshots before v2026.09, CC BY-NC 4.0 from v2026.09. Those grants are irrevocable.A paid bulk delivery, where we ship you the corpus under a separate signed agreement rather than answering calls, works the other way: on termination or expiry you delete stored copies of our compilation within 30 days. The corpus is the deliverable there, so open-ended retention would let one period buy it outright. See Rights and licensing.
Last modified on October 24, 2026