belgicaBelgian legal reference data

Courts, jurisdiction, interest rates and holidays for legal software, from the official sources. For TypeScript, Python, or any language as JSON and CSV.

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Common tasks

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Courts and jurisdiction

Every court, division and seat on the courts' portal, with names as published, addresses and each registry's contacts. Which court has jurisdiction over a municipality, a postal code or a point on the map.

Courts

The judicial map

All 162 judicial cantons with the municipalities they cover and the law's text for split cities, the arrondissements, REFNIS codes, postal codes and the NGI's boundaries.

Territory and cantons

Rates and deadlines

The legal interest rate since 1970 and the commercial rate since 2002, with the 2013–2015 contract rule. The public holidays of any year, and the next working day under art. 53 of the Judicial Code.

Interest rates

Sourced and kept current

Every dataset names its official source and every scraped record the page it was read from. The sources are fetched every week, and changes are reviewed before they're merged.

Data quality

Typed and dated

Generated id types, zod schemas and JSON Schemas. Every record has a validity period and every lookup answers for a day, so a question about last year gets last year's answer.

Core concepts

Not just for JavaScript

The same data and lookups on PyPI, and every dataset as JSON and CSV in each release, with a Frictionless data package descriptor.

Without JavaScript

At a glance

import { findCourtsWithJurisdiction, findJusticesOfThePeace, getInterestRate } from 'belgica'

findJusticesOfThePeace('44088')[0].court.id // 'justice-of-the-peace-merelbeke-melle'
findCourtsWithJurisdiction('23088', 'police-court')[0].id // 'police-court-vilvoorde'
getInterestRate('2024-06-15', 'legal') // { rate: 5.75, period: { from: '2024-01-01', to: '2024-12-31' } }

Dataset	Records	Page
Judicial areas	5	Territory
Arrondissements	12	Territory
Cantons	162 (55 cover part of a split municipality)	Territory
Municipalities	565	Territory
Postal codes	1152 (1149 postal codes, 3 shared by two municipalities)	Postal codes
Courts	347 (229 courts, the rest divisions and seats)	Courts
Prisons	39	Prisons
Houses of justice	27	Houses of justice

Reference data, not legal advice

The data is checked against official sources, but sources change and mistakes happen. Check the source before relying on a value where it matters.