Swiss Courts MCP Server

Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

🏛️ swiss-courts-mcp

MCP Server for Swiss court decisions — Federal Supreme Court (BGer), Federal Administrative Court (BVGer), Federal Criminal Court (BStGer), and all 26 cantonal courts via entscheidsuche.ch

Deutsche Version

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Overview

Access Swiss court decisions from all judicial levels through a single MCP interface. Combines full-text search with structured filters for canton, court level, date range, and law references.

🎯 Anchor demo query: "Find Federal Supreme Court case law on data protection (Art. 25 DSG) since 2020 — and if entscheidsuche.ch is down, still answer from the offline dump, clearly flagged."

Synergy with fedlex-mcp: Legislation (SR) + case law = complete legal research.

Availability: entscheidsuche.ch is non-profit infrastructure without an SLA. When it is unreachable, the server transparently falls back to a cached public dump (see Offline fallback). Every response declares its origin (source: "live" | "dump"), and dump answers carry a coverage_note — the fallback is partial, not equivalent.

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Features

• Full-text search across all Swiss court decisions
• Multi-stage law reference search with regex parser and Elasticsearch boost scoring
• Dedicated Federal Supreme Court search with chamber filter
• Canton and court level filtering
• Recent decisions feed
• Court taxonomy listing
• Decision statistics with aggregations
• Trilingual support (German, French, Italian)
• Offline fallback to a cached public dump when entscheidsuche.ch is unreachable — with explicit provenance on every response
• No API key required

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Prerequisites

• Python 3.11 or higher
• An MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.)

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Installation

pip install swiss-courts-mcp

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/malkreide/swiss-courts-mcp.git
cd swiss-courts-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"

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Quickstart

# Run directly
swiss-courts-mcp

# Or via Python module
python -m swiss_courts_mcp

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Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-courts": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "swiss_courts_mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Cloud Deployment (HTTP transport)

The HTTP transport is off by default. The default bind host is 127.0.0.1 (loopback only) — 0.0.0.0 must be opted into explicitly (the Dockerfile does this). Running HTTP without authentication logs a warning; only do so behind an authenticating reverse proxy.

# Local HTTP (loopback), no auth — development only
swiss-courts-mcp --http --port 8000

# Container (binds 0.0.0.0, auth enabled) — see Dockerfile
docker build -t swiss-courts-mcp .
docker run -p 8000:8000 -e MCP_AUTH_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" swiss-courts-mcp

Relevant environment variables (see .env.example):

Authentication validates the user identity from the JWT sub claim only; see ADR 0001.

Offline fallback (env)

Pre-warm the cache (downloads the ~120 MB SCD CSV once, so the first real outage does not pay the download cost):

SWISS_COURTS_FORCE_DUMP=1 python -m swiss_courts_mcp  # then issue one search

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MCP Protocol Version

This server pins MCP protocol version 2025-11-25 (constant PROTOCOL_VERSION in server.py). A regression test detects drift against the installed SDK so a protocol bump is a conscious change (version + CHANGELOG + this section). SDK updates land monthly via Dependabot.

Project Phase

Phase 1 — read-only (see ROADMAP.md). All tools are readOnlyHint: true; there are no writing or destructive operations. A move to Phase 2 (write) requires a clean re-audit and the gates listed in the roadmap.

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Available Tools

Court Decision Search

Court Information

Tool Annotations

All eight tools share the same hints — they are read-only, idempotent, non-destructive, and reach an external system:

A rechtsrecherche prompt is also provided (a second MCP primitive alongside tools).

Example Use Cases

→ More use cases by audience →

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Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│         MCP Client (LLM)            │
│   Claude / Cursor / Windsurf        │
└──────────────┬──────────────────────┘
               │ MCP Protocol
┌──────────────▼──────────────────────────────┐
│              swiss-courts-mcp               │
│  8 tools · Pydantic validation              │
│  Elasticsearch query builder                │
│  Provenance envelope: source = live | dump  │
└───────┬──────────────────────────────┬──────┘
        │ ① live (default)             │ ② fallback
        │ HTTPS POST/GET               │ on bot-block / 5xx / 429 /
        │                              │ timeout, or SWISS_COURTS_FORCE_DUMP=1
┌───────▼──────────────────┐   ┌───────▼───────────────────────────────┐
│     entscheidsuche.ch    │   │   SCD dump — Zenodo 14867950 (CC BY)  │
│  Elasticsearch backend   │   │   lazy download → platformdirs cache  │
│  Federal + 26 cantons    │   │   → local SQLite search               │
│  no auth · no SLA        │   │   BGer only · 2007–2024 · no full text │
└──────────────────────────┘   └───────────────────────────────────────┘

Architecture decision

This server uses Architecture C (metadata-only offline fallback), delivered via lazy download (Option A mechanics) — decided after a live probe on 2026-07-19:

• Live-first, always. entscheidsuche.ch remains the sole source on success; its behaviour is unchanged. The fallback only engages on an availability failure (bot-block, HTTP 5xx/429, timeout, connect error) or when forced.
• Source: the SCD dump (Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.14867950, Version 2024-3, CC BY 4.0), the ~120 MB CSV — metadata/regesten only, no full text. The 375 MB full-text Parquet and its heavy pyarrow dependency were rejected: a partial fallback does not justify the footprint, and full text would fake an equivalence that does not exist (BGer only).
• A second candidate was rejected: Zenodo 5529712 ("SwissJudgmentPrediction") is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — incompatible with this MIT project.
• Consequences: the CSV is cached on disk (platformdirs) and searched via SQLite; update detection uses the Zenodo versions API (conceptrecid 7793043). Every response declares source (live/dump) and dump responses add a coverage_note. CC-BY attribution ships in the tool output, not only here.

Offline fallback

The fallback is a behaviour of the existing tools, not a separate search tool (only get_fallback_status was added, for transparency). It is partial, not equivalent to the live source:

• Only the Federal Supreme Court (BGer/BGE), 2007–2024, no full text.
• Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Bundesstrafgericht and all 26 cantons are NOT covered. A cantonal or non-BGer query in dump mode returns an explicit "not covered" answer — never a silent empty result.
• get_court_decision is best-effort in dump mode: SCD case ids (docref, e.g. 1C_517/2016) differ from entscheidsuche signatures, so some lookups are honestly reported as non-resolvable.
• If neither live nor dump is available, tools return a clear, actionable error (no crash, no stack trace).

Inspect the cache and coverage at any time with get_fallback_status.

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Safety & Limits

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Project Structure

swiss-courts-mcp/
├── src/
│   └── swiss_courts_mcp/
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── __main__.py
│       ├── server.py            # MCP server, 8 tools + 1 prompt, lifespan, auth wiring
│       ├── api_client.py        # HTTP client, ES query builder, egress allow-list
│       ├── fallback.py          # offline dump layer (Zenodo → cache → SQLite)
│       ├── auth.py              # JWT bearer-token verifier (HTTP transport)
│       ├── config.py            # Settings object (env-driven)
│       ├── logging_config.py    # structured logging on stderr
│       └── models.py            # structured response envelope (provenance: live|dump)
├── tests/                       # unit (respx-mocked) + live + security tests
├── docs/                        # egress, secret-management, ADRs
├── .github/workflows/           # ci · security (gitleaks) · live · publish
├── Dockerfile                   # hardened container (non-root, 0.0.0.0 only here)
├── ROADMAP.md
├── pyproject.toml · CHANGELOG.md · LICENSE
├── CONTRIBUTING.md · CONTRIBUTING.de.md
├── SECURITY.md · SECURITY.de.md
└── README.md · README.de.md

Note (single-file tools): the 8 tools live in server.py rather than a tools/ package. At this count a single module stays readable; the registry (register_tools) keeps registration declarative. This is a deliberate deviation from the "split when > 5 tools" convention and will be revisited if the tool count grows. The offline-fallback logic is isolated in fallback.py, cleanly separated from the live client.

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Known Limitations

• Search is limited to decisions indexed by entscheidsuche.ch (not all decisions are publicly available)
• Full-text document content is not returned — only metadata, title, and abstract
• Statistics depend on Elasticsearch aggregation support of the backend
• The court taxonomy structure from Facetten_alle.json may vary

Offline fallback (partial coverage — read this): the fallback is a safety net for availability, not an equivalent mirror of the live source:

• Court scope: Federal Supreme Court only (BGer/BGE). Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Bundesstrafgericht and all 26 cantonal courts are not covered.
• Time span: 2007 – December 2024 (the SCD dump's range). Decisions outside this window are not in the dump.
• Content: metadata/regesten only — no full text offline.
• Update latency: the SCD dump is refreshed roughly quarterly on Zenodo, so the offline data lags the live index. get_fallback_status reports the cached version and can check Zenodo for a newer one.
• Law-reference search offline only matches references named in the decision's subject/regest (topic/issue) — there is no offline cited-law index.
• Responses always disclose their origin via source (live/dump) and a coverage_note; the server never silently narrows coverage.

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Testing

Unit tests mock all HTTP with respx; live tests hit the real API and run in a separate nightly workflow (live.yml), never blocking PRs.

Run from the project root with PYTHONPATH=src:

# Unit tests (HTTP mocked) — what CI runs
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -v -m "not live"

# Live API tests (real entscheidsuche.ch + Zenodo)
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -v -m live

# Linting
ruff check src/ tests/
ruff format src/ tests/

The offline-fallback tests use a small committed schema fixture (tests/fixtures/scd_sample.csv) and mock the Zenodo download with respx — the full ~120 MB dump is never committed or downloaded in CI.

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Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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Security

See SECURITY.md for the security posture and how to report a vulnerability.

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License

MIT

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Author

Hayal Oezkan · malkreide

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Credits & Related Projects

• entscheidsuche.ch — Swiss court decision search engine (live source)
• Swiss Federal Supreme Court Dataset (SCD) — offline fallback source, CC BY 4.0: Geering, F. & Merane, J. (2025). Swiss Federal Supreme Court Dataset (SCD), Version 2024-3. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14867950
• fedlex-mcp — MCP Server for Swiss federal law (legislation synergy)
• zurich-opendata-mcp — MCP Server for Zurich open data
• Model Context Protocol — Open protocol for AI tool integration

Installation

Run via uv's uvx — no clone or manual install needed. Add to your MCP client config (mcpServers for Claude Desktop, Cursor and Windsurf; use a top-level servers key for VS Code in .vscode/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-courts-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "swiss-courts-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}