> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.libratech.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# OpenCaseLaw

> Open-access Swiss case-law database: close to a million federal and cantonal decisions, rebuilt nightly. Free, included.

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**OpenCaseLaw** is the open-access Swiss case-law project at [opencaselaw.ch](https://opencaselaw.ch/). It scrapes the decisions Swiss courts publish on their own sites, deduplicates them, normalises them into a single corpus and rebuilds that corpus every night. The result is released under CC0. Turn OpenCaseLaw on as a research source and Libra searches those decisions and cites them directly in the answer.

<div className="libra-buddy-callout">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/libra-4206ec93/wgVZXcGnHS4aJk9T/assets/images/libra-buddy/presenting.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=wgVZXcGnHS4aJk9T&q=85&s=db41075b4a259a172f68465ae5c3421e" alt="Libra mascot presenting" width="827" height="615" data-path="assets/images/libra-buddy/presenting.png" />

  <div className="libra-buddy-callout-content">
    Name the canton and the period: *"Zürich appellate decisions on tenancy termination since 2023"*. Libra turns both into filters on the search rather than hoping the words show up in the text.
  </div>
</div>

## What it covers

The corpus runs to close to a million published decisions reaching back to 1875, from 109 courts across all 26 cantons and the federal bench, in German, French and Italian:

* **Bundesgericht** (BGer) — Federal Supreme Court, both BGE and non-BGE decisions.
* **Bundesverwaltungsgericht** (BVGer) — Federal Administrative Court.
* **Bundesstrafgericht** — Federal Criminal Court.
* **Bundespatentgericht** — Federal Patent Court.
* **Cantonal courts** that publish online (Obergerichte, Verwaltungsgerichte, and others).

Coverage reaches past the courts in places: decisions of the federal data-protection commissioner (EDÖB) and FINMA's insurance-law rulings carry their own labels in Libra's results. Practice areas follow whatever the courts publish — civil, criminal, public, tax, migration and social-insurance law.

## What Libra retrieves

OpenCaseLaw is a **case-law source**, and that is all Libra reads from it. Every result is a decision record: docket number, court, date, language, the Regeste or rule statement, and a link to the decision on opencaselaw\.ch. Libra cites each one in the answer.

<Note>
  The opencaselaw\.ch project also publishes federal and cantonal legislation, but Libra's integration does not reach it, and there is no way to walk the citations between one decision and another. Asking for *"decisions citing Art. 28 ZGB"* runs as a full-text search for that reference — useful, but not a resolved link between statute and case. For statute text, use [Fedlex](/en/integrations/switzerland/fedlex).
</Note>

## Narrowing a search

Libra can constrain a search by canton (`CH` for the federal courts, or `ZH`, `BE`, `GE`, `VD`, `TI` and the rest), by the language the decision was written in, and by a date range, and it returns up to 50 decisions at a time — 20 unless you ask for more. Say what you want in the question and Libra sets the filters for you.

The query itself takes quoted phrases, Boolean `AND` / `OR` / `NOT`, prefix matching (`Miet*`), docket numbers and statute references such as *Art. 8 BV*. Search in German, French or Italian: the decisions are written in those languages, so terms in them match far better than English ones.

## What you can ask

* *"Find recent Federal Supreme Court rulings on non-compete enforceability."*
* *"Zürich appellate decisions on tenancy termination during renovation since 2023."*
* *"Bundesverwaltungsgericht decisions mentioning Art. 28 ZGB from 2020 onwards."*
* *"Décisions du Tribunal fédéral sur la résiliation abusive du bail depuis 2022."*

## Setup

Nothing to connect. OpenCaseLaw is **Included** — no add-on, no credentials. It appears in the **Research** picker as soon as **Switzerland** is one of your **Jurisdictions of practice**, and because it needs no connection it isn't listed under **Settings → Integrations**.

<Note>
  OpenCaseLaw is broad but not exhaustive: it holds what each court publishes online, and a decision published today may only appear after the next nightly rebuild. For court-bound work, verify the case through your firm's primary research source or the publishing court directly.
</Note>

## OpenCaseLaw or Entscheidsuche?

Both draw on the same published decisions, so you rarely need both switched on at once. OpenCaseLaw is the better pick when you can already name what you are after — a docket number, or a statute reference such as *Art. 8 BV* — because the query syntax and language filter above let you aim at it precisely. [Entscheidsuche](/en/integrations/switzerland/entscheidsuche) has the side-by-side comparison.

## Tips

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Pair Fedlex with OpenCaseLaw">
    Statute plus cases is the standard Swiss research pattern. Both are Included, so it costs nothing to enable them together.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Name the court or the canton">
    *"Bundesgericht-Rechtsprechung zu…"* or *"Entscheide des Obergerichts Zürich zu…"* narrows the search to that instance instead of the whole corpus.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Add a date range for currency">
    *"…since 2024"* or *"between 2020 and 2023"* keeps the answer on current jurisprudence rather than older cases.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Ask in the language of the decision">
    A French-language question finds Romandy decisions that the same question in German or English would miss. You can also ask for one language explicitly — *"nur deutschsprachige Entscheide"*.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Commentary comes from elsewhere">
    OpenCaseLaw returns the decisions themselves, with no doctrinal commentary attached. For analysis of the legal issue behind the ruling, add [Stämpfli](/en/integrations/switzerland/staempfli) (Add-on) alongside it.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Next steps

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Fedlex" icon="scale" href="/en/integrations/switzerland/fedlex">
    Official Swiss federal law; pair with case-law search.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Zefix" icon="building" href="/en/integrations/switzerland/zefix">
    Swiss commercial register: companies, legal forms, signing rights.
  </Card>
</Columns>