How this case-law search works — and how well
A plain-English note for lawyers. Last reviewed May 2026.
What it searches
Every English-language ECtHR judgment in our snapshot — 19,822 cases, ~1.31 million numbered paragraphs — restricted to substantive text (reasoning, facts, admissibility, just satisfaction, separate opinions). Pure boilerplate (headers, annexes, one-line summaries) is excluded.
How it works (without the jargon)
- Meaning, not keywords. Each paragraph becomes a numeric "meaning fingerprint" (an embedding); your query is fingerprinted the same way and matched by legal substance. That is why it understands plain language — "can the police read my texts?" finds the Article 8 interception case-law even though those words never appear.
- Authority weighting. Results are nudged toward the Court's leading cases (HUDOC "Key case"/importance), because a practitioner wants the authoritative judgment.
- A second read. The top candidates are re-read against your query by a separate model to sharpen the order.
How we measured it
We did not grade ourselves. We used the Court's own 41 official Case-Law Guides as an answer key — each states a legal proposition and pinpoints the exact case paragraphs that support it (~8,400 propositions, ~24,000 pinpoint citations) — and checked whether the system returns the cited case and the cited paragraph.
How well it works
| On the Court-Guides benchmark | Top 5 | Top 10 |
|---|---|---|
| Correct case retrieved | ~80% | ~86% |
| Exact cited paragraph retrieved | ~60% | ~70% |
An independent AI-lawyer review found ~85–90% of the top-10 paragraphs genuinely relevant — higher than the "exact paragraph" figure, because the Guides cite only some of the relevant paragraphs, so the strict measure understates real usefulness.
Where to be cautious
- A research aid, not legal advice, and never a substitute for reading the judgment. Always open the case on HUDOC and verify.
- Relevant ≠ current law. A retrieved case may have been refined, distinguished or overtaken by later case-law. Check how the principle stands today.
- "The paragraph" is rarely one paragraph. The Court states a principle, applies it, and concludes across several §§; the system may surface the reasoning where you expected the holding. Read around the hit (click a paragraph to expand neighbours).
- It favours leading cases — a niche but on-point lesser-known judgment may rank lower.
- Absence is not proof. If a point is not in the results, that is not evidence it does not exist — refine the query.
- Coverage. English judgments in a point-in-time snapshot; excludes inadmissibility-only and non-judgment documents.
Examples
Semantic Search
Any language. The system rewrites your text into a dense legal query and detects the relevant article(s).
Advanced options
The court understood you as saying
The cases that answered your query
X axis = year of judgment · Y axis = similarity to your case · node size = times cited (log scale). Arrows show citations between cases visible in this view — a selected case may also cite or be cited by cases not shown here; check the dossier to see all of them. Foundational doctrines (Klass-style) become large; recent cases stay small.
⚐ Chart capped at 30 most relevant cases. The full result list lives in the “Ranked passages” panel below.
Your results over time
The judgments that answered your query, placed by year of judgment. Drag the cursor along the timeline.
Each dot is one case, placed by year of judgment. Bigger dot = more matching passages · labelled dots are the closest matches to your query · the highlighted dot is the one you're reading. Click any dot to open it.