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 the /Bundesrecht
endpoint for consolidated federal law (BrKons), and is designed for
reproducible legal research.
Version 0.1.0 is experimental, and breaking changes may occur before 1.0. If you encounter any bug, you are welcome to file an issue at the package's GitHub repo.
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.
You can install risAT from GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("werkstattcodes/risAT")The RIS website is organised into several content areas, each backed by one or more API "applications". The table below shows which of them risAT currently supports. Status legend: ✅ implemented · 🔜 planned · — not yet supported.
| RIS area | Applications | risAT |
|---|---|---|
| Judikatur (case law) | VfGH, VwGH, Justiz, BVwG, LVwG, Normenliste, DSK, DOK, PVAK, GBK, UVS, AsylGH, UBAS, UMSE, BKS, VERG | ✅ implemented |
Bundesrecht – consolidated (BrKons) |
Federal law in consolidated form | ✅ implemented |
Bundesrecht – gazettes (BgblAuth, BgblPdf, BgblAlt) |
Federal Law Gazettes (1848–present) | 🔜 planned |
Bundesrecht – drafts (Begut, RegV, Erv) |
Consultation drafts, government bills, Austrian laws in English | 🔜 planned |
Landesrecht (LrKons, LgblAuth, Lgbl, LgblNO, Vbl) |
State law (consolidated) and state gazettes | 🔜 planned |
Kundmachungen & Erlässe (Upts, Erlaesse, Avsv, …) |
Other notices and ministerial decrees (/Sonstige) |
🔜 planned |
Gemeinden (Gr, GrA) |
Municipal law and notices | — |
Bezirke (Bvb) |
District authority notices | — |
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 |
| Application | Function | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Consolidated federal law (BrKons) | ris_search_federal() |
Title/full-text/index search, version (Fassung) and in-/out-of-force date filters |
Lower-level building blocks for advanced use:
| Step | Judikatur | Bundesrecht |
|---|---|---|
| Build request | ris_req_case_law() |
ris_req_federal() |
| Execute request (with pagination) | ris_perform_case_law() |
ris_perform_federal() |
| Parse response | ris_parse_search() |
ris_parse_federal() |
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"
)
# Consolidated federal law (Bundesrecht): look up a law by its short title
results_abgb <- ris_search_federal(title = "ABGB")
# The consolidated text as it stood on a given date (point-in-time version)
results_mrg <- ris_search_federal(query = "Mietzins", version_date = "2020-01-01")Search functions automatically iterate through all RIS pages and return results
as a tidy tibble with columns including id, court, decision_date,
case_number, and content_urls (a list-column of download links).
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").
If you use risAT in your research, please cite it:
citation("risAT")Schmidt R (2026). risAT: An R package wrapping the API of the Austrian Legal Information System (RIS). R package version 0.1.0, https://github.com/werkstattcodes/risAT.