Credible legal analysis begins with the document that creates, records, or resolves the legal question. This protocol sets the minimum standard for finding that document, reading it in context, and describing it faithfully.
Core rule
Build from the primary document. Reporting, commentary, and database summaries may corroborate a primary-source reading, but they do not replace it.
Verification sequence
- Identify the precise proposition the analysis needs to support.
- Locate the controlling or operative document.
- Confirm the document’s date, posture, jurisdiction, and procedural significance.
- Read enough surrounding material to avoid extracting a sentence from its limiting context.
- Record the source and the date it was checked.
- Distinguish the document’s text from the publication’s inference.
- Hold any unresolved proposition from publication.
Public accountability
The public protocol will evolve through versioned releases. Each release will explain what changed and why. The goal is not to automate legal judgment. It is to make disciplined legal reasoning easier to inspect, repeat, and challenge.