ATLAS/BRIEFINGLaw, organized for consequential decisions.

SOURCES

Source Standards

Legal writing is only as good as what stands behind it. This page states the hierarchy ATLAS applies and what it refuses to treat as a source.

The hierarchy

  1. Statutes and regulations. The controlling text — the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, and state codes where they govern. Read directly, never through a summary.
  2. Official agency material. Form instructions, policy manuals, program pages, and published guidance from the agency that administers the rule: USCIS, DHS, the State Department, DOJ and EOIR, DOL, EEOC, IRS, CFPB, FinCEN, FTC, SEC, USPTO, the Copyright Office, HHS, HUD, and their state counterparts.
  3. Courts. Rules of procedure and decisions, cited descriptively by real name and year, and only where the holding genuinely shapes the subject.
  4. Recognized secondary reference. Established legal reference works and bar-association material for framing and terminology — never as the authority for a rule.

What is not a source

  • Marketing pages, law-firm blog posts, and content produced to generate enquiries.
  • Forums, social posts, and aggregator summaries.
  • AI-generated summaries of law, including any produced during drafting. A model's paraphrase is a prompt to go read the statute, never a substitute for it.
  • Another publisher's article structure. Sources are read; competitors are not copied.

Two validations before publication

Jurisdiction validation. Does this authority actually govern the reader the brief addresses? A federal circuit's rule is not national law. A state statute is not a model rule. A regulation applies only to the entities it defines as covered.

Time validation. Is this the operative version today? Statutes are amended, regulations are stayed or vacated, agency guidance is withdrawn, and litigation suspends rules mid-effect. Where a rule is in motion, the brief says so and points to the page that carries its current status.

How sources appear

Every brief ends with a numbered source list. Links inside the body point to the specific authority for the claim being made. External links open in a new tab and carry rel="noopener noreferrer". Government pages are linked at a stable address rather than a deep path that changes with a site redesign.

When verification fails

If the desk cannot verify a point against a source that meets this standard, the brief either omits the point or states plainly that the position is unsettled. It never fills the gap with a plausible-sounding number, deadline, or holding. An acknowledged gap is useful; a fabricated certainty is dangerous.

Sources move, and occasionally a link points somewhere that no longer says what it said. Report it through corrections and the desk will re-verify and repair the citation.