Lexplorer Swiss Law Research

List articles of one law in document order (browse like a table of contents). law: abbreviation (OR, ZGB, ...) or SR number. Returns article_id for get_article / read access, heading (Randtitel) and a short preview. Paginated via limit/offset.

nav_list_articles

List decisions with filters: year, chamber (substring), legal_area (substring), language de|fr|it, court (code from nav_tree, e.g. bger, bge = published leading cases, bvger, zh_obergericht). Paginated via limit/offset. Reads only the Lexplorer database.

nav_list_decisions

Outgoing citations of a decision: the earlier judgments it relies on, resolved against the Lexplorer corpus (confidence 0..1 reflects docket-resolution certainty). Reverse of get_citing_decisions.

get_cited_decisions

The 'folders' of the statute corpus: all loaded federal laws with SR number, abbreviations (de/fr/it), title and article count. Optional substring filter on abbreviation/title/SR number.

nav_list_laws

Chunks of one section in reading order (key, parent, depth, preview). section: regeste|facts|considerations|verdict. parent_key drills into sub-Erwägungen (e.g. parent_key='2' lists 2.1, 2.2 ...).

nav_list_chunks

The 'folders' of one decision: sections (regeste/facts/considerations/verdict) with chunk counts, plus metadata and citation counts.

nav_list_sections

Full text of one Botschaft paragraph (bbl_{year}_{page}#p{n}) + n neighbor paragraphs — the citation-grade source for Materialien.

read_botschaft

Fetch a cantonal (or CH) act by the ID returned by search_cantonal_law or by a "CANTON:systematic_number" ref, e.g. "ZH:700.1". language: de|fr|it. Without `article`: returns metadata (title, canton, systematic number, version history, links to the official text) PLUS `systematics_siblings` — neighbouring acts filed under the same systematics category, for browsing. With `article`: returns the actual article TEXT (heading + content), not just a link. On the first article request for an act, its official PDF is retrieved and split into articles (§/Art. heuristic); later requests for other articles of the same act are answered from the server's cache, and those articles become searchable via search_cantonal_law(vector_query=...). Quality gate: if the PDF is a scan or no article numbering is found, no article text is returned; the `pdf_scan`/`no_article_structure` flag and the links to the official text are returned instead. A new consolidated version in force replaces the cached articles automatically. External services: the act's metadata (cached 7 days) and, on the first article request for an act, its official PDF are fetched from a public directory of Swiss legislation, and the extracted articles are embedded by an external embedding service (EU region). The extracted text is stored only in the server's own Lexplorer database (cache); nothing is written to the directory or to any user account.

get_cantonal_law

Text of a federal statute article, e.g. get_article('OR', '271'). abbreviation: German abbr (OR, ZGB, BGG, StGB ...) or SR number.

get_article

Full text of one chunk plus `context` neighbor previews before/after (same section, reading order) and the decision's cited statute articles.

read_chunk

Read a whole section (facts|considerations|verdict|regeste) as continuous text, paginated by characters (offset/limit, max 30000).

read_section

Read the full text of one decision from the Lexplorer corpus, paginated by characters (offset/limit, max 30000). Prefer read_section or read_chunk when you need a specific part.

read_full_text

Search cantonal (and CH) legislation in the Lexplorer catalog (~21.6k current acts, all 26 cantons + CH): keyword (query, websearch syntax against title/abbreviation/systematics path) and/or vector_query (semantic, for concept/topic queries like "Grenzabstand beim Bauen" rather than exact titles); results are RRF-merged. With vector_query it also searches the article texts already retrieved via get_cantonal_law(..., article=...) — those hits have hit_type "article" with a text preview, everything else is hit_type "law". canton: 2-letter code (ZH, VD, TI, ...) or omit for all. language: de|fr|it (pass the canton's official language for best keyword results). systematics_prefix: restrict to a systematics path substring (e.g. "Bauen" or "Raumplanung") for browsing by subject area. include_live_fallback (default True): additionally runs a live full-text search of `query` inside the act texts on a public directory of Swiss legislation and merges it into the ranking; if nothing is found at all, those live results are returned as `live_fallback`. Set False to search the Lexplorer catalog only. External services: unless include_live_fallback is False, the query text is sent to that public legislation directory; a vector_query is embedded by an external embedding service (EU region). Directory responses are kept only in the server's own cache (7 days); nothing is written anywhere else.

search_cantonal_law

Search federal statute articles: keyword_query (websearch syntax) and/or vector_query (semantic), RRF-merged like search_hybrid. The vector_query text is embedded by an external embedding service (EU region); results come exclusively from the Lexplorer statute corpus. Optional filters: language, sr_number.

search_articles

Search Botschaften/Materialien (verbatim paragraphs of the official publication): keyword_query and/or vector_query, RRF-merged. The vector_query text is embedded by an external embedding service (EU region); results come exclusively from the Lexplorer corpus. For ratio legis, Gesetzgebungsgeschichte, Würdigungen.

search_materialien

Semantic (vector) search over all decision passages. The query text is embedded by an external embedding service (EU region); results come exclusively from the Lexplorer corpus. Filters: language de|fr|it, section regeste|facts|considerations|verdict, year range, chamber, legal_area, court (code from nav_tree), decision_id. Every hit is a navigation entry point (chunk_id, decision_id).

search_semantic

Statute articles a decision cites (reverse of get_article_case_law) — the bridge from a judgment to the applied law. Sorted by mention count.

get_decision_articles

Table of contents of one federal law: its official structure (Abteilung/Titel/Abschnitt) with article ranges and counts, in document order. law: abbreviation or SR number. Drill into a range via nav_list_articles(offset) or get_article directly.

nav_law_toc

Batch-verify judgment citations before submitting an answer. For each ref ('BGE 143 IV 9', '1B_373/2016', ...): exists in corpus? canonical/published form (prefer the BGE form when it exists), decision date, cited_by. Run this over ALL citations in your draft — unverified refs must not be cited.

verify_citations