Editorial Standards
How the Institute reviews, sources, corrects and versions its work.
Updated 26 June 2026
The Institute argues that legal AI should show its sources, admit its uncertainty and keep a history of its changes. These standards apply the same rules to the Institute's own writing.
Review
Every piece is reviewed by the director before publication. Review checks, at a minimum, that:
- every authority is traced to its source and cited for a proposition it actually supports;
- every number is traced to its source, and a figure that changes over time carries an as-of date;
- no pinpoint citation is given unless it has been confirmed against the source;
- declared constructs of the Institute are labeled as constructs and never presented as settled law;
- load-bearing empirical claims in the Institute's own research are stated as conjectures, with the result that would refute them;
- pieces that re-tell a working paper (variations) stay faithful to every factual claim in the source;
Provenance tiers
The Institute's research papers label their sources by provenance tier, following the convention used in the Ariadne's Thread papers.
| Tier | What it covers | Examples of use |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Binding or case-attested legal authority | Procedural standards, standards of review, controlling decisions |
| Tier 2 | Peer-reviewed or established scholarly work | Published jurisprudence, measurement theory, empirical studies |
| Tier 3 | Declared constructs of the Institute, and preprints not yet peer-reviewed | Postures, the Z metric, the Grayness Score, recent preprint findings |
Two rules follow. First, nothing in Tier 3 is ever presented in the language of Tier 1: a construct can be useful, tested and well defended, but it is not law. Second, where a Tier 3 source is doing real work in an argument, the piece says so, and says what would change if the source did not hold up.
Corrections
- Substantive errors are corrected in place. The piece's revision history records the date, what changed and why.
- Errors that change a conclusion are corrected in place and also noted at the top of the piece, so that a reader who relied on the earlier version can see what moved.
- Retracted pieces stay at their address, marked as retracted, with the reason. Links and citations to them do not break.
- Superseded frameworks and pieces are marked as superseded and point to their successor.
- Typographical fixes that change no meaning are recorded with a one-line note.
To report an error, use the Contact page and name the piece, the version you read, and the claim at issue.
Versioning and revision notes
The Institute versions its writing the way software teams version code, because much of its argument is that law should be governed that way too.
- Original dates are kept. A piece first published elsewhere keeps its original publication date, and carries an archival note naming where and when it first appeared.
- Every piece has a revision history. Each entry is a date and a one-line note, like a commit message. The first entry records publication or import.
- Frameworks carry version numbers and changelogs. A change to what a framework requires, or how it is applied, increments the major version. A clarification that leaves its requirements unchanged increments the minor version. Earlier versions remain described in the changelog, so a citation to version 1.0 stays meaningful after version 2.0 appears.
- Theses carry the date first stated and a revision history. A thesis number is never reused for a different claim.
- Status is explicit. Pieces are current, superseded or retracted; frameworks are stable, draft or superseded.
See How to Cite for citing a specific version.