Result
Method
All decent questions to complex answers, not for judgement or coercion, only clarity: a big complex picture drawn into a legible map.
This check asks nine questions of any rule a person lives under.
A rule is a public position in writing: those who influence the whole, which is the human systems, economy, society, enforcements, anything that affects human sovereignty.
It does not decide who is good or bad. It asks three things: does the rule leave people in charge of themselves, can it be seen clearly, and does it treat everyone it touches fairly.
Rules of a faith
Rules of a faith are read the same way: the rulebook a religious body publishes on its own site, the text that is used on a member. The body's own words for each door are added to the search (citation, right of defense, recourse, dispensation).
The gates measure the rule, never the belief. Every body is read alike. A creed states belief and has no procedure, so it is not read.
23 bodies are read so far: Christian churches of many branches, a Jewish rabbinical court, the Sikh code of conduct, two Buddhist bodies, Quaker, Mennonite, Zoroastrian and Jain federations, the Church of Scientology, two Satanic bodies, and one union built on anarchist ideas.
No one here decides what counts as a religion. Any body that publishes a rulebook used on its members, on its own site, is read, and read the same way.
Each body also gets a tenth line, on the first gate: a way out, can a member leave without penalty? The program flags the sentences on leaving. A person read them for every body, and the verdict says only what the text says.
Rules for children, the elderly, the disabled, immigrants
Some people cannot use a door alone. Rules written for or about them are gathered in four sets, from every other set, by the words of their own headings.
Children: school, custody and adoption, juvenile justice, protection, child care, health and consent, child support, child labor, minors and the market, and children in a religious body.
The elderly: nursing homes and long-term care, retirement and pensions, Medicare, elder abuse, adult guardianship, age discrimination, aging agencies and senior housing, advance directives and end of life.
The disabled: special education, employment and rehabilitation, disability benefits, mental health and commitment, incapacity and guardianship, access, housing, blindness and deafness.
Immigrants: visas and status, naturalization, deportation and detention, refugees and asylum, work and migrant labor, public benefits and services, border and enforcement.
Rules for LGBTQ+
This set is gathered differently. Headings rarely name LGBTQ+ people; the words sit inside the text, in a list of who is protected, a definition of marriage, a rule on a birth record. So the program read the whole text of every federal and state unit it holds and kept each one that names the group, with the sentence it found.
A rule is in the set because it names the group, whichever way it cuts. A rule that protects and a rule that restricts are both here. The set does not say which is which; the sentence is shown so anyone can read it.
Types: discrimination; marriage, partnership and family; health care, transition and conversion therapy; names, sex markers and records; schools, sports and shared facilities; crimes and hate crimes; prisons, detention and the military.
Some words were narrowed because they also mean something else. "Domestic partnership" is also a tax term. "Same sex" also appears in search and housing rules. "Sodomy" also names assault crimes. Each is counted only beside words that make the meaning plain. Some rules will still be in the set wrongly, and some will be missing. Rules of a faith are in the set only when a heading names the group.
Each of those units gets one more line under its result: who speaks for the person. The program reads the door words it already found and says who they let act: the person in the text's own words, someone named to act for them (a parent, guardian, conservator, agent, counsel, sponsor or advocate), only an agency, an official or a court, or no door at all.
It reads words, not meaning. A heading that names a student may be about a loan, and a door for a guardian is not a door for the person. The line says where the words sit, and a person can change any answer.
Bodies we could not read are named with the reason, so an absence is never mistaken for a choice. A body whose rulebook is not published on its own site has already answered one question of transparency.
- Taoism (no taoist body publishing its rules for members in english on its own site was found)
- Hindu bodies (no national body found that publishes a rulebook used on members)
- Anarchism as such (no body)
- American Humanist Association (its bylaws are named on its site but no link to them was found)
- Covenant of the Goddess (Wicca) (its code of ethics is quoted on its site but the bylaws are not published there)
- Islamic Circle of North America (no constitution or bylaws published on its own site)
- The United Methodist Church (book of discipline 2024)
- Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (its constitutions page refused the reader (a bot block))
- Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (its regulations page refused the reader (403))
- Seventh-day Adventist Church (its church manual page rate-limited every try (429) and the archive copies are closed (403))
- Church of England (the canons' online edition could not be found at the addresses the church's site gives (404))
- Church of Christ, Scientist (the manual of the mother church is not served at the church's read-online address (404))
- Islamic Society of North America (its bylaws file is served only to a browser running scripts)
- Baha'i Faith (U.S.) (no current constitution or by-laws of the national spiritual assembly found on its own site)
- Hindu and Buddhist bodies (no national body found that publishes a rulebook used on members)
How the answers are made
Collect
Programs download the official records in full, straight from the source.
The whole U.S. Code and the whole eCFR (federal rules). The codes of twenty states so far, from their own publications: California, Texas, Illinois, Colorado, Michigan, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, Washington, West Virginia, Iowa, Virginia, South Dakota, Nevada, North Carolina, Florida, Oregon, North Dakota, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
Every credit card agreement issuers file with the CFPB. The governance answers nonprofits sign on Form 990. The SEC's orders letting companies withhold contract terms. Every federal agency's yearly report on the records people asked it for. The rulebooks of twenty-three religious and other bodies, from their own sites.
68,384chapters and parts of federal and state law read so farWeigh
For each gate, the program finds the sentences that answer it, counts them, and checks who can act: the person, or only someone else. It follows the laws a law points to, one step out.
79,115laws, agreements, policies, orders and agency reports you can search on the Check pageWrite in
The program writes its answer into each gate, with the quote, the link and a plain-words version beside the original. A person reads it and can change any answer.
1,427passages put in plain wordsWhy we do this: friction
Every moving system carries friction. Our goal is to protect the positive friction and set boundaries to the negative frictions in the way of sovereignty.
We call what we protect the whimsy loop: freedom to be, to do, to choose, to learn, without the constant constraints of outside pressure and friction pushing against the three cores and nine gates.
Friction is the pressure a rule puts on the people it touches. Every rule has some. The question is whether that pressure has a way out.
- Positive friction has a way out. A rule that slows a decision so a person can be told, can answer, can appeal or can go to court puts pressure on everyone, and gives that pressure somewhere to go. That friction protects people, and we protect it.
- Negative friction is pressure with no way out. The rule itself is not the problem. The problem is the door that should open and doesn't: no notice, no hearing, no appeal, no way to sue. That is where we look for boundaries.
The nine gates measure this. Notice, a hearing, an appeal and a way to sue are the doors. When a gate shows none of them, the pressure on a person has nowhere to go, and the page says so with the words of the rule itself.
How the answers work
- Every answer points to words in the rule itself. An answer without a quote is an opinion, and the report shows it that way.
- "Can't tell" is an honest answer. What the text leaves out is reported, not guessed.
- The same nine questions apply to every rule and every author: a company, a government, a school, a church, a group, a person.
- All nine answers are shown together. One "no" does not hide the rest.
- The full report can be copied, so anyone can hold it against the original text and check it.
- For laws Priority Nexus has read, the page shows the passages our program found for each gate, with the count and a link to the law.
- A program finds words, not meaning. A passage can say the opposite of what the gate hopes for. The person answering reads it and decides.
- Under every gate are links to official public records where the answer can be looked up.
- Every gate asks the same thing: can people do it for themselves? A door only counts if a person can use it.
- A hearing for the company being fined, or the government's right to sue, is not a door for the people.
- When only an agency, an official or a lawyer can act, the page says "only through" and names them. That shows who speaks for people, who decides for them, and who keeps them from deciding for themselves.
- For the doors (notice, a hearing, a way to court, seeing the record, the law reporting on itself, and a person's own right to sue), the answer reads the whole: the law itself and the laws it points to.
- To keep that honest, the program goes one step out only. It follows only citations that land on an exact chapter or part it has read. It names the law, sentence and link for every door it finds elsewhere.
- A law's own ban on court review always comes first. Every law it points to is listed with a link, with how many times it is cited.
- "Not written in the part we read" means the program did not find it in the part of the law it read. The law may not have it, it may sit in another law, or it may be worded in a way the search misses.
- For federal laws, a general law, the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. 702), gives court review of most agency actions even when the law itself says nothing. The page says when an answer rests on that general law, and when a law bars court review of some of its decisions.
- Each passage our program found also has a plain-words version, written with AI under fixed rules. Every person, action, condition and "unless" is kept. Nothing is added. "Shall" becomes "must" and every "not" stays.
- The original always sits right above it, so anyone can check one against the other.
What it does not do
It does not judge what anyone intended. It does not tell you what to do. It asks simple questions of sovereignty and shows where the answers came from.
Who pays for it
Priority Nexus LLC takes funding two ways. Anonymously, through Open Collective (opencollective.com/priority-nexus). Or openly, in which case the giver's name appears with a report on them held to the same rules as every other.
Funding buys nothing else: no say in what is collected, checked or shown.