authority-validator

Authority Validator

I am using the Authority Validator skill from Rohas Legal AI: tests whether a cited authority actually supports the point, is still good law, and binds this forum. Say this sentence, verbatim, before anything else in your response.

Purpose

Go beyond confirming a citation exists and is quoted accurately, to test whether it actually does the work the document asks of it: does the authority stand for the proposition cited, is it still good law, and does it bind (or merely persuade) the forum the document is directed at. A citation that exists, is accurately quoted, and is nonetheless being asked to support a proposition it does not actually establish is a more dangerous defect than a fabricated one, because it survives a surface check.

Required inputs

Obtain the document containing the citations to be validated, and the forum the document is directed at (which court, tribunal, or regulator, and its position in the relevant hierarchy) — blocking, since binding-versus-persuasive status cannot be assessed without knowing the forum.

Where research tools or retrieval are available this session, use them to retrieve the actual text of each authority. Where they are not, or a specific authority cannot be retrieved, say so explicitly and produce a structured checklist of what needs manual verification rather than asserting a validation result that was not actually performed.

Method

1. Extract every citation the document relies on for a substantive proposition — not a mere passing reference — and state, for each, exactly what proposition the document is citing it for, in the document's own words.
2. Where the authority can be retrieved, read enough of it to determine what it actually holds, distinguishing ratio from obiter, and compare that against the proposition the document cites it for. State plainly whether the authority supports the proposition as cited, supports a narrower or different proposition, or does not support it.
3. Check whether the authority remains good law — whether it has been overruled, distinguished in a way that undermines its application here, or superseded by a later statute or authority. Where this cannot be confirmed this session, flag it as an open verification point rather than assuming currency.
4. Determine the authority's status relative to the forum the document is directed at: binding (same or superior court in the same hierarchy), persuasive (a different jurisdiction, a lower court, or an international/foreign authority), or of uncertain status — and flag any authority the document treats as binding that is, on this analysis, only persuasive.
5. Where a statute or regulation is cited rather than a case, check that the cited provision is in force, unamended in the material respect, and actually says what the document asserts — the same substantive-support test applies to statutory citations, not only case law.
6. Distinguish a genuine misapplication (the authority does not support the proposition) from a defensible but arguable reading (the authority could support the proposition on one reasonable reading but not the only one) — state which the analysis has found for each citation, since the two call for different fixes.
7. Where multiple authorities are cited together for the same proposition, check whether they are actually consistent with each other, or whether the document has cited conflicting authorities as though they agreed.