How It Works

The record, not a seance.

The Seat answers questions from the written record and nothing else. This page explains how an answer is built, what is checked, who reviews it, and where the limits are.

The method

Every answer is built only from primary sources: the founders’ and thinkers’ own writings, or, in The Constitution mode, the text of the Constitution and the Court’s opinions. The research runs on our own machine with a local model. The model reads the passages the question calls for, keeps a ledger of what each source says (including the evidence that cuts the other way), and writes the answer from that ledger.

Then code, not the model, checks every quotation word for word against its source. A quotation that does not match is never passed off as genuine: it is marked QUOTE NOT VERIFIED where it stands. Every citation opens the passage it cites, so you can read the words yourself.

The three layers of an answer

You see the short answer first: a few plain sentences, up to three verified key quotations, and one labeled extrapolation line. The full record sits folded below it: the ledger, the contrary evidence, the reasoning, the coverage note and every source. When several voices are convened, their short answers sit side by side, followed by where their records agree and disagree.

Review before publish

• Your question. A question nobody has asked before is researched on our machine, then a person reviews the answer before it is posted, within 24 hours of your asking. Your link shows each step: Received, Researching, In review, Published. If it is not published, the link says so, with one short, neutral reason.
• Questions already answered open at once and do not count against your limit.
• The library’s pre-generated answers (common questions put to each voice, and to the Constitution, ahead of time) are built by the same pipeline and the same quotation check, and are published as they are generated. An answer whose quotation check did not pass keeps its QUOTE NOT VERIFIED marks and is left out of the Prior Questions list.
• Any published answer can be withdrawn after review.

The Seat Rule, in plain words

You may ask about anyone. When a question names or targets a living or modern person, of any party, this page does not generate new judgments, accusations or predictions about that person, and no founder or thinker is ever made to speak for or against anyone living. It shows only what Civic Realism has already published about that person, with a link to the dossier, and then asks the record the conduct question underneath: what the office requires of whoever holds it. Behavior only. Policy is never judged. The handling is identical whoever is named. Facts of public record about institutions and events are stated plainly and cited, in any direction; a claim is not a finding.

The standard itself is set out in the doctrine: Theatrical Politics and the Responsibility Threshold. How the published dossiers are scored is in the methodology.

The Constitution mode

Answers come only from the Constitution's text (National Archives transcription), the Constitution Annotated (2022 edition), the Supreme Court's opinions through June 2022, and the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers. Each quotation is checked word for word by code. Where the Justices split, the opinion of the Court and the dissent are both shown, each labeled, with the current holding and no verdict. A syllabus is labeled as the Reporter's summary, not the Court's words, and scanned pages are marked.

Teach me to work it out turns the answer into a lesson: the method step by step, with sources and a guiding question at each step, and the worked conclusion last. Ask the Constitution.

Not legal advice

Sources and limits

• Only the written record. A founder or thinker answers only from their own recorded writings. Where the record is silent, the answer says so rather than filling the gap.
• “As of” a year. For founders with a dated record you can limit an answer to what they had written by the end of a given year, to see a view before it changed.
• What the text is. Translations name the translator. Scanned or OCR text, a reporter’s notes, a fictional character’s words and reconstructed texts are marked wherever they are cited.
• The Constitution mode uses case law through June 2022, and shows both sides where the Justices split.
• Only engines that are built and tested are open. Others are shown as coming.
• Limits per visitor keep the research machine free for everyone; the ask form shows the current limit.
• A model can be wrong. That is why the quotations are checked by code, the extrapolation is labeled, and the sources are one click away. Read the passage before you rely on a line.