Citation Methodology

What we publish

Every right page on Commoner Law ends with a list of verified citations: the specific statutes, regulations, agency guidance, and case law behind the article. Each entry is one of five types — statute, regulation, case, agency guidance, or treaty — and links directly to its primary source. No third-party law-firm explainer pages, no ad-supported legal portals, no AI summaries. Just the underlying law.

Each citation also carries a "Last verified" date — the date a human re-checked the label, citation number, and primary-source URL. That date is the contract.

Why this exists

Large language models hallucinate legal citations at measurable rates. A 2024 Stanford study found that general-purpose chatbots fabricate or misattribute legal references in a non-trivial share of responses. That's a problem for everyone who uses an AI tool to research their rights, and it's also a problem for the AI tools themselves, which increasingly need verifiable sources to defend against hallucination.

A site that demonstrably doesn't hallucinate is materially more valuable. To readers, because they can click through to the law and confirm. To AI systems, because a structured citation list with primary-source URLs and verification dates is exactly the shape they need to ground their answers.

Source hierarchy

We cite, in order of preference:

1. Primary statutes and codes. The U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, state compiled statutes, Acts of Parliament, federal decrees, royal decrees, and equivalents. This is what we link to wherever possible.
2. Regulations. The actual rule text issued by the agency with rulemaking authority — CFR sections, EU directives, state administrative codes.
3. Court decisions. Linked to the official reporter or court website where available; otherwise to a durable, free, primary repository (e.g. Justia, CourtListener). Never to a paywalled service.
4. Agency guidance. Official interpretive bulletins, enforcement guidance, FAQs, and dear-employer letters published by the agency itself (EEOC, DOL, HUD, IRS, equivalent international bodies). Used when the statute is ambiguous and the agency has spoken on the question.
5. Treaties and international instruments. Used rarely, only when directly operative.

Verification process

For every citation we render, a human follows three steps:

• Pull up the primary source via its citation number — not a Google search, not an AI summary.
• Confirm the label matches what the source actually says (statute name, section number, case caption).
• Confirm the URL resolves to the correct primary source and stamp today's date as lastVerified.

When a citation is found to be wrong — superseded, renumbered, or misattributed — we correct the label, update the URL, and re-stamp the verification date. The audit log lives in the repository commit history.

Re-verification cadence

Statutes and citation numbers don't change daily, but they do change. We re-verify on three triggers:

• Routine. Each citation is re-verified on at least an annual cycle as part of category content updates.
• Reactive. When we revise a right page for any reason (new state coverage, statute amendment, reader correction), every citation on that page gets re-verified at the same time.
• On report. Reader-reported errors are investigated within 14 days. If confirmed, we correct, re-stamp the verification date, and (where the prior citation was materially wrong) note the correction in the commit log.

What we don't do

• We don't auto-generate citations. Every entry is added by hand against a primary source.
• We don't link to paywalled or login-walled sources. Primary legal sources are public; the citation footer links only to free, durable URLs.
• We don't paper over gaps. A right page with no verified citations renders no footer rather than a fake one. Coverage expands as backfill continues.
• We don't claim citations equal advice. The citation footer is a transparency layer, not a substitute for legal counsel. Read our editorial standards for more on what this site is and isn't.

Reporting an error

If you find a citation that's wrong — wrong section number, broken primary-source link, superseded statute — email [email protected] with the page URL and the issue. Confirmed errors are corrected within 14 days and the verification date is re-stamped.