Editorial standards
The rules an answer has to satisfy before it goes up, and the ones it has to keep satisfying to stay up.
Accuracy
An answer states what the law provides, not what we think it should provide. Where authorities split, we say they split. Where a question is genuinely unsettled, we say it is unsettled rather than picking the tidier side. Where the honest answer is "it depends on your state", that is the answer, followed by what it depends on.
Sourcing
- Every answer cites at least five sources, all of them official or authoritative: federal and state statutes and regulations, agency guidance, court rules, and the agencies' own explanatory pages.
- We do not cite blogs, law-firm marketing pages, news aggregators, encyclopedias, or content generated by another automated system.
- We do not cite a page we have not opened. Where we cannot confirm a deep link exists, we cite the parent page rather than guessing at a path.
- Outbound links to firms or organizations are never sources. A source list contains official material only.
Independence
No advertiser, sponsor, law firm or other outside party sees an answer before publication, suggests a subject, or influences how one is written. Nobody pays for a link, a mention, or a favorable description. Where a page links out to a professional service, that link is marked as external and carries no endorsement — we have not vetted the recipient, do not represent them, and say nothing about the quality of their work.
The limits of the format
Clear Justice is a publication. It is not a law firm and has no attorneys. Nothing on the site is legal advice, nothing creates an attorney–client relationship, and no answer knows your facts. Legal outcomes turn on details a general page cannot see: which state, which court, what was in the notice, what date the clock started, what happened last time. Treat an answer as a map, not as a decision.
What we refuse to publish
- Anything that would help a reader evade a legal obligation, defeat a lawful check, or conceal a fact they are required to disclose.
- Fabricated statistics, invented case outcomes, or made-up quotations.
- Invented people: no author bylines, no reviewer credentials, no imaginary editorial board.
- Any claim that this site is a law firm, has offices or lawyers, has handled cases, or has clients, results, testimonials or awards.
- Marketing language in an answer: no calls to hire anyone, no consultation offers, no urgency.
- Content that identifies or targets a private individual.
Dates
The site carries no publication, review or modification dates: not in the page, not in the structured data, not in the sitemap, not in the feeds. The reasoning is set out on the about page. In short, a date implies a currency guarantee we would be lying to make, and it distracts from the thing that actually protects the reader — a linked official source that carries whatever the rule is today.
Review and revision
Answers are revised whenever a rule they describe changes, whenever a cited source moves, and whenever a reader shows us something is wrong. A revision replaces the text in place; we do not keep a visible changelog on the page, because a list of edits is of no use to somebody trying to solve a problem. Substantive corrections are described on the corrections page.
Accessibility
Every page is built to meet WCAG 2.2 AA: color contrast is measured rather than assumed, in both light and dark themes; the site works from the keyboard alone; the search field is a proper ARIA combobox; images carry honest alternative text describing the abstract figure they actually are; and nothing depends on JavaScript except search. See the accessibility statement.