Search US statutes, constitutions, court rules, and executive actions

Hybrid semantic + BM25 search across the full US legal corpus indexed by Vaquill — over 1.3 million sections.

Corpora covered:

• USC — United States Code (54,855 sections)
• CFR — Code of Federal Regulations (219,403 sections)
• STATE — 50-state statutes (41 states ingested, 1,068,918 sections)
• CONSTITUTION — U.S. Constitution (74 chunks across Articles I–VII + 27 Amendments)
• FEDERAL_RULES — FRCP, FRCrP, FRE, FRAP, FRBP (297 sections)
• STATE_CONSTITUTION — state constitutions (CA, VA, NC, WI; 468 sections)
• STATE_RULES — state court rules (currently CA, 640 rules)
• EXECUTIVE_ACTION — Presidential Documents from the Federal Register (3,567 Executive Orders, Proclamations, and Memos from 2015 to today; daily refresh)

Authentication: API key via Authorization: Bearer vq_key_...

Cost: 4 credits per call (see /api-credits/pricing).

Returns relevant sections with full metadata: citation, title hierarchy, and direct links to HTML, PDF, XML, TXT, and DOCX versions where available.

Examples

# Search SEC regulations
requests.post(url, headers=h, json={
    "query": "insider trading material nonpublic information",
    "corpusType": "CFR",
    "titleNumber": 17,
    "limit": 5,
})

# Search California state statutes
requests.post(url, headers=h, json={
    "query": "shareholder derivative action standing",
    "corpusType": "STATE",
    "state": "ca",
})

# Search Executive Orders on a topic
requests.post(url, headers=h, json={
    "query": "AI safety federal agency adoption",
    "corpusType": "EXECUTIVE_ACTION",
})

# Search Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
requests.post(url, headers=h, json={
    "query": "personal jurisdiction long-arm statute",
    "corpusType": "FEDERAL_RULES",
})

# Cross-corpus search (no corpusType filter)
requests.post(url, headers=h, json={
    "query": "due process equal protection fourteenth amendment",
})

Filters

• corpusType (optional) — one of the 8 corpus tokens above. Omit to search all.
• state (optional, 2-letter lowercase) — restrict to a specific state’s corpus. Only meaningful with STATE, STATE_CONSTITUTION, STATE_RULES.
• titleNumber (optional, integer) — restrict to a USC/CFR title number. Ignored for state corpora whose titles are alphabetic codes (e.g. Texas pe = Penal Code).

POST /api/v1/statutes/search

Search US statutes, constitutions, court rules, and executive actions

cURL

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1/statutes/search \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '
{
  "query": "<string>"
}
'

200

{
  "results": [
    {
      "actId": "<string>",
      "citation": "<string>",
      "citationShort": "<string>",
      "title": "<string>",
      "corpusType": "<string>",
      "state": "<string>",
      "year": 123,
      "relevanceScore": 0,
      "excerpt": "",
      "titleNumber": 123,
      "titleName": "<string>",
      "chapter": "<string>",
      "chapterName": "<string>",
      "sectionNumber": "<string>",
      "displayPath": "<string>",
      "breadcrumb": [
        {}
      ],
      "htmlUrl": "<string>",
      "pdfUrl": "<string>",
      "xmlUrl": "<string>",
      "textUrl": "<string>",
      "docxUrl": "<string>",
      "stateHtmlUrl": "<string>",
      "govInfoHtmlUrl": "<string>",
      "govInfoPdfUrl": "<string>",
      "externalUrl": "<string>"
    }
  ],
  "total": 0,
  "query": "",
  "processingTimeMs": 0,
  "creditsConsumed": 0
}

Authorizations

Authorization · string · header · required

API key issued from the Vaquill developer dashboard. Pass as Authorization: Bearer vq_key_...

Body

application/json

query · string · required

Search query in natural language.

Required string length: 2 - 500

Example:

"insider trading penalties"

corpusType · enum<string> | null

Restrict to one corpus. One of: USC (United States Code), CFR (Code of Federal Regulations), STATE (state statutes — 41 states currently ingested), CONSTITUTION (U.S. Constitution), FEDERAL_RULES (FRCP / FRCrP / FRE / FRAP / FRBP), STATE_CONSTITUTION (state constitutions, currently CA/VA/NC/WI), STATE_RULES (state court rules, currently CA), EXECUTIVE_ACTION (Federal Register Presidential Documents). Omit to search across all corpora.

Available options: USC, CFR, STATE, CONSTITUTION, FEDERAL_RULES, STATE_CONSTITUTION, STATE_RULES, EXECUTIVE_ACTION

Example:

"CFR"

state · string | null

2-letter state code (lowercase, e.g. ca, tx, ny) used to filter state corpora. Ignored when corpusType is USC, CFR, CONSTITUTION, FEDERAL_RULES, or EXECUTIVE_ACTION.

Required string length: 2

Example:

"ca"

titleNumber · integer | null

Filter by USC/CFR title number (e.g., 17 for SEC, 42 for civil rights). Only meaningful for USC/CFR; ignored for state corpora whose titles are alphabetic (e.g. Texas pe = Penal Code).

Example:

17

limit · integer · default: 10

Number of results to return.

Required range: 1 <= x <= 50

Response

200

application/json

Successful Response

results · StatuteResult · object[]

Show child attributes

total · integer · default: 0

Total results found.

query · string · default: ""

The search query used.

processingTimeMs · number · default: 0

creditsConsumed · number · default: 0