The risAT package provides a tidyverse-friendly interface to the Austrian RIS (Rechtsinformationssystem) Open Government Data REST API v2.6. It covers the /Judikatur endpoint (case law / jurisprudence) across all supported court applications and is designed for reproducible legal research.
Please note that the package is in a development stage. Upcoming changes may break existing code. If you encounter any bug, you are welcome to file an issue at the package’s GitHub repo.
Data source
This package accesses data from the RIS (Rechtsinformationssystem) provided by the Austrian Federal Chancellery (BKA) via its Open Government Data REST API. The data is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence as part of Austria’s Open Data initiative.
Neither the package nor its author is affiliated with the BKA or the RIS.
Installation
You can install risAT from GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("werkstattcodes/risAT")Available court applications and functions
The RIS Judikatur endpoint covers multiple court applications. risAT provides convenience wrappers for all of them, plus a generic search function that accepts any application code:
| Court / Application | Function | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| All Judikatur applications | ris_search_case_law() |
Generic; accepts any application code |
| VfGH (Constitutional Court) | ris_search_vfgh() |
Defaults to Rechtssätze |
| VwGH (Administrative Court) | ris_search_vwgh() |
|
| Justiz (OGH, OLG, LG, BG) | ris_search_justiz() |
Richest parameter set |
| BVwG (Federal Administrative Court) | ris_search_bvwg() |
Since 2014 |
| LVwG (9 state administrative courts) | ris_search_lvwg() |
Use federal_state to narrow |
| DSK / DSB / PDK (data protection) | ris_search_dsk() |
|
| BDB / DK / DOK / BK (disciplinary) | ris_search_dok() |
|
| PVAK / PVAB (staff representation) | ris_search_pvak() |
|
| GBK (equal treatment commissions) | ris_search_gbk() |
No doc-type flags |
Lower-level building blocks for advanced use:
| Step | Function |
|---|---|
| Build request | ris_req_case_law() |
| Execute request (with pagination) | ris_perform_case_law() |
| Parse response | ris_parse_search() |
Minimal example
library(risAT)
# Convenience wrapper: Administrative Court (VwGH)
results_vwgh <- ris_search_vwgh(query = "Baurecht")
# Convenience wrapper: Constitutional Court (VfGH)
# Defaults to Rechtssätze (RS). Set `search_decision_text = TRUE`
# to include Entscheidungstexte (TE).
results_vfgh <- ris_search_vfgh(query = "Grundrecht")
# Convenience wrapper: Federal Administrative Court (BVwG)
results_bvwg <- ris_search_bvwg(
query = "Asyl",
decision_type = "Erkenntnis",
decision_date_from = "2023-01-01"
)
# Ordinary courts: OGH and below
results_ogh <- ris_search_justiz(
query = "Schadenersatz",
court = "OGH"
)
# Generic search across all Judikatur applications
results_all <- ris_search_case_law(
application = "data_protection",
query = "Videoüberwachung"
)Output
Search functions automatically iterate through all RIS pages and return results as a tidy tibble with columns including id, court, decision_date, case_number, content_urls (list-column), and app_metadata (list-column). See the reference documentation for full details.
For a full column name reference mapping the original German RIS API fields to their English risAT equivalents, see vignette("risAT").
Citation
If you use risAT in your research, please cite it:
citation("risAT")Schmidt R (2026). risAT: Interface to the Austrian RIS OGD REST API. R package version 0.0.0.9000, https://github.com/werkstattcodes/risAT.