About Supreme Court Explainer

Purpose

Supreme Court Explainer is designed to help non-lawyers understand US Supreme Court decisions in a clear, accessible way. Our goal is to make these important legal decisions understandable to everyone, not just those with legal training.

What we offer:

Plain-language explanations: Get help understanding complex Supreme Court decisions without legal jargon
Ask questions: Engage in a conversation about cases - ask follow-up questions to deepen your understanding
Reliable, non-partisan information: Think of it as your own personal legal journalist discussing Supreme Court decisions with you, providing factual, unbiased analysis

Why Supreme Court Explainer Instead of ChatGPT?

While general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT are powerful, Supreme Court Explainer offers several key advantages for understanding court decisions:

Access to the most recent cases: Our system has access to the latest Supreme Court decisions, including cases that fall outside of ChatGPT's training data cutoff date. This means you can explore and understand brand-new decisions as soon as they're published.

Full case context: When you ask a question about a case, we place the entire case text into the AI's context window. This means the AI is reading the actual court opinion while answering your question, which significantly reduces hallucinations and provides more precise, text-grounded answers.

Specialized prompting: Behind the scenes, we use carefully crafted prompts specifically designed to help non-lawyers understand legal decisions. These prompts guide the AI to provide clear, accessible explanations while maintaining accuracy.

Technology Stack

Supreme Court Explainer is built with modern, powerful technologies:

Large Language Model: OpenAI GPT-5.1 for natural language understanding and explanation
Case Data: CourtListener API from the Free Law Project provides access to Supreme Court opinions
Backend: FastAPI (Python) for fast, reliable API services
Frontend: Next.js for a modern, responsive web interface
Search: OpenAI embeddings with semantic search for finding cases by description

Who Created Supreme Court Explainer

Supreme Court Explainer is the individual project of Shane Orr.