Dockets, filings, and court records
PACER Case Locator
The PACER Case Locator is the federal judiciary's nationwide index of district, bankruptcy, and appellate cases, used to find which court a case is in.
Individual courts only know about their own cases. The Case Locator sits above them and answers the question no single court can: is this party in any federal case anywhere. It is updated once daily and returns the party name, the court, the case number, the date filed, and the date closed.
It is an index, not an archive. Once you have the court and the case number you go to that court's own system for the docket and the documents. Searches in the Locator are billed at the same ten cents a page as everything else.
Its most common use is a negative one: confirming that a person or company is not in federal litigation. Due diligence, background checks, and journalism all use it that way, and a clean result carries real meaning because the index spans every federal court.
How it appears on a docket
A Case Locator result row reads RODRIGUEZ, MARIA (pla) 1:23-cv-04517 nysd Filed 06/02/2023 Closed 04/09/2026.
Related terms
- PACER — PACER is the federal judiciary's public access system for court records, charging ten cents a page with most single documents capped at thirty pages.
- Docket Number — A docket number is the unique identifier a court assigns to a case, such as 1:23-cv-04517, and it is the fastest way to find that case again.
More on dockets, filings, and court records
See this term in a real case
Search federal court records and read the filings where pacer case locator actually shows up. New to federal dockets? Start with how to find a federal case.