ciaransaunders BAILII case downloader
Fetches UK/Irish judgments from BAILII and saves them as clean, readable PDFs (BAILII chrome, nav, search forms, donation banners and footers removed).
BAILII now sits behind Anubis — a JavaScript proof-of-work bot wall, on top
of its long-standing cloud-IP block. The bundled script solves the proof-of-work
in pure Python (no browser needed) and handles BAILII's CGI quirks, so prefer it
over web_fetch/curl, which will just hit the "Making sure you're not a bot!"
page.
The script
scripts/bailii_fetch.py — self-contained, Python 3 stdlib only for fetching.
PDF rendering uses the first available of: wkhtmltopdf → headless
Chrome/Chromium → weasyprint. If none is present it saves the cleaned HTML and
says so in the output (you can then convert it yourself).
Run it with python3 scripts/bailii_fetch.py <command> .... All commands print
JSON to stdout.
Choosing a command (in order of preference)
1. cite — when you have a neutral citation. Most reliable; use this first.
python3 scripts/bailii_fetch.py cite "[2024] EAT 114" --out DIR
Resolves the citation via BAILII's citation finder and downloads the case. Works for the usual courts: UKSC, UKHL, UKPC, EWCA, EWHC, EAT/UKEAT, UKUT, etc. Exits with code 2 and a helpful message if the citation doesn't resolve.
2. url — when you already have the BAILII case URL.
python3 scripts/bailii_fetch.py url "https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2021/5.html" --out DIR
3. search — when you only have the case name. Returns candidates; does NOT auto-download.
python3 scripts/bailii_fetch.py search "Uber Aslam" --limit 6
Prints a JSON list of {url, title} candidates (title-scoped search — fuzzy by
design). Pick the right one yourself, confirm with the user if ambiguous,
then download it with url. Don't assume the first result is correct; BAILII
often returns the whole litigation chain (ET → EAT → CA → SC) and you want the
specific instance the user means.
Options
--out DIRwhere to save (default: current dir). Create/choose a sensible folder, e.g. an authorities bundle directory.--keep-htmlalso keep the cleaned standalone HTML next to the PDF.--no-pdfsave cleaned HTML only, skip PDF rendering.--limit N(search only) max candidates to return.
Output
cite and url print JSON with title, source_url, pdf (path), optionally
html, and pdf_engine. The PDF carries a small "Retrieved from BAILII · "
provenance banner at the top so the source is always traceable — useful for an
authorities bundle.
Notes / caveats
- Anubis is occasionally flaky. The script already solves-and-retries and
validates the final page (rejects bot-wall pages, checks it's a real
/cases/...htmljudgment). If a fetch still fails, just run it again. - Always sanity-check the result. Confirm the returned
titlematches the case the user asked for before relying on it — especially aftersearch. - This pulls public judgments from a free public legal database. It is not a substitute for a citator: BAILII does not show subsequent treatment / whether a case is still good law.
- Filenames are derived from the case title and capped in length; the script handles the awkward characters.