Emerald API

Start with a search.

Emerald gives you access to Kenyan judgments through a REST API. You can also connect the same case database to an MCP client.

Authentication

Send your Emerald key in the X-API-Key header.

X-API-Key: em_live_...

The base URL is https://emerald.up.railway.app.

Search cases

GET /v1/search

Search the text and metadata of cases already fetched into Emerald.

Example

curl "https://emerald.up.railway.app/v1/search?q=adverse+possession&document_type=judgment&limit=10" \
  -H "X-API-Key: em_live_..."

Parameter	What it does
`q`	Words, a phrase, party name or citation to search for.
`court`	Filter by court code, for example `KECA`.
`date_from`	Only return judgments on or after this date.
`date_to`	Only return judgments on or before this date.
`limit`	Number of results to return. Maximum: 100.
`offset`	Skip results when paginating.

Read a case

Search results include a document ID. Use it to fetch the case record or its text.

GET /v1/documents/{id}Case title, citation, court, date, source URL and hashes.

GET /v1/documents/{id}/search-textPlain text used by Emerald for search and retrieval.

GET /v1/documents/{id}/contentThe stored legal-body HTML.

GET /v1/documents/{id}/content-urlA short-lived signed URL for the stored body artifact.

Find a case by citation

GET /v1/citations/resolve

curl --get "https://emerald.up.railway.app/v1/citations/resolve" \
  --data-urlencode "citation=[2025] KEHC 19140 (KLR)" \
  -H "X-API-Key: em_live_..."

New and updated cases

GET /v1/updates

Use an ISO timestamp in since. This is useful when you keep your own local index or cache.

curl "https://emerald.up.railway.app/v1/updates?since=2026-08-18T00:00:00Z" \
  -H "X-API-Key: em_live_..."

MCP

Use https://emerald.up.railway.app/mcp/ as the remote server URL. Authenticate with your Emerald key as a Bearer token.

Authorization: Bearer em_live_...

The server exposes tools for judgments, statutes, citation lookup and recent cases.

search_casesSearch the fetched judgment corpus.

search_statutesSearch fetched statutes.

get_caseReturn details for one selected case.

get_case_textRead the judgment in bounded chunks.

resolve_citationLook up an exact citation.

recent_casesSee cases recently added or refreshed.

Errors and limits

`401`	The API key is missing or invalid.
`404`	The requested case or stored content is not available.
`429`	The account has reached its current usage or rate limit.

Search returns at most 100 results per request.