@pipeworx/california-jury-instructions

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Tools: 5

Official California jury instructions as adopted by the Judicial Council of California — CACI (civil, e.g. “303” = Breach of Contract—Essential Factual Elements) and CALCRIM (criminal, e.g. “200” = Duties of Judge and Jury), current (2026) edition, full instruction text with Directions for Use/Bench Notes, Sources and Authority/Authority, and revision history.

Tools

• caci_lookup(number) — full official text of one CACI (civil) instruction or verdict form by number (“303”, “VF-303”): instruction text, Directions for Use, Sources and Authority, Secondary Sources, revision history.
• calcrim_lookup(number) — full official text of one CALCRIM (criminal) instruction or verdict form by number (“200”, “VF-200”): instruction text, Bench Notes (incl. Instructional Duty), Authority, Related Issues, Secondary Sources, Commentary where present, revision history.
• ca_ji_search(query, set?) — find the official instruction NUMBER for a claim or charge by keyword (“breach of contract” -> CACI No. 303), across CACI, CALCRIM, or both. Title search, not full-text search.
• ca_ji_whats_new(set?, edition?) — which instructions are new or revised in an edition, aggregated in one call (fleet #3171) — e.g. CALCRIM 2026 -> No. 1808 (Organized Retail Theft), 3235, 3238, 3459. For CACI this is the Judicial Council’s own front-matter changed-numbers list for that edition; for CALCRIM (which carries no equivalent table) it is derived from each instruction’s own revision-history line. Only the current edition is available; withdrawn/revoked numbers are not datable from this index (see Known limits below) and are always returned empty.
• ca_ji_editions(set?) — current edition year/adoption date and archived edition PDF links for either or both sets.

Auth

Keyless. This reads the Judicial Council’s own published, public PDFs — not a third-party API, no registration of any kind.

Data sources

• https://www.courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/judicial_council_of_california_civil_jury_instructions_2026.pdf — CACI (civil), current 2026 edition, the single source for every caci_lookup response.
• https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/calcrim-2026.pdf — CALCRIM (criminal), current 2026 edition, the single source for every calcrim_lookup response.
• https://courts.ca.gov/partners/juryinstructions.htm — the Judicial Council’s own index page linking to both resource centers, current editions, and archived editions back to ~2019-2021 (surfaced via ca_ji_editions, not text-extracted).

Why this pack bakes the index instead of fetching per call

Both editions are published as ONE full-edition PDF — CACI 2026 is ~3,560 pages/11MB, CALCRIM 2026 is ~2,680 pages/84MB. There is no per-instruction endpoint, and parsing either document takes tens of seconds even outside a Worker, so scripts/bake-index.mjs downloads and parses both ONCE (re-run when a new edition is adopted, roughly annually) into src/ca-ji-index-data.ts, which the gateway uploads to KV and injects as args._bakedIndex on first call per isolate — see that script’s header and src/index.ts’s top comment for the full mechanism (same pattern as south-dakota-code, hawaii-code).

shared/src/pdf-text.ts does not work on these PDFs. Tested directly against the real CACI PDF: it silently drops every inter-word space (this typesetter encodes word gaps as TJ-array kerning adjustments, not space glyphs — e.g. "Thiseditionof CACI includes...") and mis-decodes several ligatures (fi/fl -> ”®”, en-dash -> ”±”) via subsetted font encodings outside its documented scope. pdftotext (poppler-utils) reconstructs spacing correctly via real glyph positioning and is used instead — a build-time dependency only; the Worker never runs the bake script. Re-running it (to pick up a new edition) needs pdftotext on the machine that runs it (brew install poppler / apt install poppler-utils).

Parsing approach: both documents’ running headers name the instruction on every content page (“CACI No. 303”, “CALCRIM No. 200”), and every series/category has its own divider page listing every instruction number + official title — used as the ground-truth index, independent of body-text parsing. Verified 2026-10-07 against the live 2026 editions: CACI 1,140/1,140 ground-truth numbers accounted for (1 — #4001 — correctly revoked, not a parse gap); CALCRIM 780/780, 100%.

Known limits (said plainly, not papered over):

• Only the CURRENT edition’s text is baked. Archived editions (back to ~2019-2021) are linked by URL via ca_ji_editions, not text-extracted — a past edition’s exact wording is not retrievable from this pack.
• “Proposed revisions” (the Council’s separate public-comment process for pending changes) are NOT covered at all. Everything served is ADOPTED, in-force text (status: "adopted" on every successful lookup).
• ca_ji_search matches official instruction/verdict-form TITLES and series names, not full instruction body text.
• ca_ji_whats_new cannot date a WITHDRAWAL to a specific edition: a revoked/reserved number’s text (and any revocation date) is dropped from this index at bake time, so its withdrawn list is always empty (with a note saying so) — check caci_lookup/calcrim_lookup on a number instead to see whether it currently returns status: "revoked_or_reserved". Only the current edition’s new/revised list is available; any other edition returns a clear “not available” response.

Licensing: both documents carry an explicit reprint grant on their own copyright page — “In accord with Cal. Rules of Court, Rule 2.1050(c), these instructions and verdict forms are freely available for use and reproduction, with appropriate citation to this publication.” This pack cites the publication via source/source_url on every response.

Tools

• caci_lookup — Get the OFFICIAL text of a California Civil Jury Instruction (CACI) by number — e.g. “303” (Breach of Contract—Essential Factual Elements) or a verdict form like “VF-303”. As adopted by the Judicial C
• calcrim_lookup — Get the OFFICIAL text of a California Criminal Jury Instruction (CALCRIM) by number — e.g. “200” (Duties of Judge and Jury) or a verdict form like “VF-200”. As adopted by the Judicial Council of Calif
• ca_ji_search — Find the official California jury instruction NUMBER for a claim, cause of action, or criminal charge by keyword — “breach of contract” -> CACI No. 303; “first degree murder” -> a CALCRIM number; “sel
• ca_ji_whats_new — Which CACI (civil) and/or CALCRIM (criminal) jury instructions are NEW or REVISED in an edition, aggregated in one call — e.g. “what’s new in the 2026 CALCRIM edition” -> CALCRIM No. 1808 (Organized R
• ca_ji_editions — List the CURRENT edition year/adoption date and ARCHIVED edition PDF links for CACI (civil) and/or CALCRIM (criminal) jury instructions. Use when a caller needs a past year’s edition (e.g. for a trial