Low Risk

get_recent_court_opinions

Get the most recently published court opinions from CourtListener

How to control get_recent_court_opinions ↓

What get_recent_court_opinions does on Us Legal

AI agents call get_recent_court_opinions to retrieve information from Us Legal without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.

Low Risk

Why get_recent_court_opinions needs a policy

This tool only retrieves/queries publicly available court opinion data from an external source. It performs no create, modify, delete, or execute operations. The data retrieved is read-only and non-destructive. The blast radius of misuse is minimal—an agent cannot cause harm by fetching court opinions.

From the tool's definition Tool name is 'get_recent_court_opinions' and description states it retrieves 'the most recently published court opinions from CourtListener'. The verb 'Get' and the retrieval-focused description indicate data retrieval with no modification or side effects.

Documented attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access get_recent_court_opinions gives an agent:

How to control get_recent_court_opinions

PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway — it sits between your AI agents and Us Legal, and nothing reaches the server without passing your rules. This is the rule we recommend for get_recent_court_opinions:

policy.json
{
  "version": "1",
  "default": "deny",
  "tools": {
    "get_recent_court_opinions": {}
  }
}

get_recent_court_opinions is read-only, so it stays allowed — but everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.

  1. Create a free account and register Us Legal — nothing to install.
  2. Add this policy — paste it, or build it visually.
  3. Point your MCP client (Claude, Cursor, anything) at your gateway URL.
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Related tools and policies

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Questions about get_recent_court_opinions

What does the get_recent_court_opinions tool do? +

Get the most recently published court opinions from CourtListener. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Us Legal MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.

How do I enforce a policy on get_recent_court_opinions? +

Register the Us Legal MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for get_recent_court_opinions: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Us Legal. Nothing to install.

What risk level is get_recent_court_opinions? +

get_recent_court_opinions is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.

Can I rate-limit get_recent_court_opinions? +

Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the get_recent_court_opinions rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.

How do I block get_recent_court_opinions completely? +

Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for get_recent_court_opinions. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.

What MCP server provides get_recent_court_opinions? +

get_recent_court_opinions is provided by the Us Legal MCP server (jamesanz/us-legal-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.

Enforce policy on every Us Legal tool call.

Start from Us Legal, add the rest of your stack, and see everything your agents can call. Then put policy on all of it.

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18 Us Legal tools catalogued and risk-classified — across an index of 43,000+ MCP servers.

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