Bulk Legal Datasets

The Refugee Law Lab supports bulk open-access to legal data to facilitate research and advocacy. Bulk open-access also helps avoid asymmetrical access-to-justice and amplification of marginalization that results when commercial actors leverage proprietary legal datasets for profit.

Unless otherwise indicated, the data linked below is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Users must also comply with upstream data licenses, including requests in source urls to prevent search engine indexation to protect privacy (see details in each dataset).

Full Dataset

• Refugee Law Lab: Canadian Legal Data (~185,000 cases & ~11,000 acts & regulations)

Court Decisions (Full Text)

• Supreme Court of Canada Bulk Decisions Dataset (1877-present, ~15,500 cases) (updated Dec 31 2024)
• Federal Court of Appeal Bulk Decisions Dataset (2001-present, ~14,500 cases) (updated Dec 31 2024)
• Federal Court Bulk Decisions Dataset (2001-present, ~63,500 cases) (updated Dec 31 2024)
• Tax Court of Canada Bulk Decisions Dataset (2003-present, ~15,500 cases) (updated Dec 31 2024)

Immigration and Refugee Board Decisions (Full Text)

• Refugee Appeal Division Bulk Decisions Dataset (2013-present, ~29,000 cases) (updated Dec 31 2024)
• Refugee Protection Division Bulk Decisions Dataset (2002-2020, ~12,500 cases) (updated Dec 1 2023) (legacy: no further updates)
• Refugee Law Lab Reporter Bulk Decisions Dataset (2019-present, ~1,000 cases) (updated Dec 31 2024)

Other Administrative Tribunal Decisions (Full Text)

• Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Bulk Decisions Dataset (2003-present, ~2,000 cases) (updated Dec 1 2024)
• Social Security Tribunals Bulk Decisions Dataset (2013-present, ~31,000 cases) (updated Dec 31 2024)

Legislation & Regulations (Full Text) (excludes tables, annexes, schedules & forms)

• Federal Bulk Legislation Dataset (Consolidated Legislation) (~2,000 acts) (updated Dec 31 2024)
• Federal Bulk Regulations Dataset (Consolidated Regulations) (~9,500 regulations) (updated Dec 31 2024)

This project draws on research supported by the Law Foundation of Ontario and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.