A citation is a claim.
Check it against the register.
Every case and statute a court document relies on, checked against the published copies at The National Archives’ Find Case Law and legislation.gov.uk. The citation resolves, the name matches, the quotation is verbatim, the pinpoint holds. Where the register cannot decide, the verdict is unresolved and says exactly why.
Exact · register-bound · independently verifiable
// § 01 · what is checked
The register decides. Nothing else does.
Authority reads a filing, finds every recognised citation, and puts each claim the document makes about an authority to the published record: that the authority exists under that citation, that the name the document gives it is the register’s, that quoted words appear verbatim at their source, that a pinpoint lands where the document says it does, and that a statute is quoted as it stood on the date that matters.
In the browser checker the document never leaves the page; only the citations are looked up. On the command line it runs offline against a local copy of the register’s own files, so a privileged document need never touch the network.
// § 02 · the record
Every run ends in a record another party can verify.
Each check issues a sealed, source-bound record: every claim, every verdict, and the exact register bytes that decided it. A standalone verifier recomputes the whole record from those bytes, with no network access and none of my code. A flipped verdict or an altered byte is INVALID; a missing file is INCOMPLETE and never a pass. Checking me must not require trusting me.
// § 03 · what it refuses
Unknown stays unknown.
Authority does not judge relevance, argument, or merit; that remains the lawyer’s work, and the record says so. Where the register carries no entry, no claim is made. Where a comparison cannot be settled, the verdict is unresolved and the record names the fact that would settle it, rather than rounding doubt to reassurance.
// § 04 · in the document
Corrections arrive as tracked changes.
In Microsoft Word, Authority applies the corrections the register entails as native tracked changes, each edit bound in the record to the claim and the witness that justify it, with the guarantee re-checked before it is stated. Names are flagged, never rewritten: names carry style, and style is the author’s.
// § 05 · who it is for
Built for the people the record answers to.
Chambers, firms, and compliance officers who must be able to show that every authority in a filing was checked. And the courts and archives whose published record is the thing being checked against: Authority is built on the register’s side, and the published copy is always the reference, never the target.
// § 06 · start
Ten filings, one record each.
A pilot runs Authority over ten recent filings and returns a sealed record for each, with the standalone verifier, under terms agreed in writing first. Nothing is published without your approval.