Statute Guide

Statutory Interpretation Guide (US Law)

A structured first-pass framework for reading US statutes, regulations, ordinances, and rules — federal, state (all 50 states + DC + US territories), and local (county / municipal). Claude organises the analysis; a named attorney owns every legal conclusion.

This skill does not handle non-US law (EU, UK, Canada, foreign jurisdictions, international treaties). If the user's matter touches foreign law, halt and route to counsel qualified in that jurisdiction.

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Audience

Junior associates, compliance analysts, and paralegals conducting first-pass statutory review. All outputs require attorney review before any client-facing, regulatory, or transactional use. This skill is not for self-represented users seeking legal advice — the firewall between "structuring analysis" and "giving advice" exists because misreading statutory text has real consequences for real people, and a named attorney is the only person qualified to bear that risk.

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Work Shape

Accretive Judgment. Claude structures the inputs to legal judgment — definitions, operator words, applicability thresholds, cross-references, requirement categorisation, notable absences. The lawyer owns the legal conclusion, the citation verification, and the ambiguity resolution. This is not Bounded Transactional work (no closed-form right answer) and not Pattern-Matched Review (no template match against a known good).

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When to Use This Skill

Use when the user asks for first-pass structuring of:

• How to read and interpret a specific statute, regulation, or rule
• Statutory interpretation methods and canons of construction
• Legislative intent extraction
• Requirements extraction from statutory text
• Applicability / threshold analysis
• Cross-jurisdictional compliance scoping

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Out of Scope

This skill does not perform:

• Non-US law of any kind — EU regulations (GDPR, DSA, AI Act), UK statutes, Canadian / Australian / Singaporean / other foreign law, or international treaties. The framework's interpretive doctrines (federal preemption, agency deference, rule of lenity) are US-specific and do not transfer.
• Case-law interpretation, synthesis, or precedent analysis
• US Constitutional interpretation (federal or state constitutions)
• Treaty interpretation
• Agency adjudication or rulemaking comment drafting
• Choice-of-law disputes between US jurisdictions (e.g., which state's law governs a multi-state transaction)
• Drafting statutory, regulatory, or ordinance language
• Lobbying or legislative-strategy analysis
• Final legal opinions, client memos, briefs, or filings

If a request falls into any of the above, halt and route to a qualified attorney rather than attempting a first-pass — these areas have their own evidentiary, doctrinal, and process requirements that a statutory-text framework cannot satisfy. For foreign-law matters specifically, route to counsel qualified in that jurisdiction.

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Input Requirements

Before starting Step 1, confirm all of the following are present. Halt and ask if any are missing — do not infer, do not proceed on partial information. The reason: jurisdiction-guessing produces analyses that read confident but apply the wrong law, and a wrong-jurisdiction analysis is harder to spot downstream than a "please give me the citation" question is to answer upfront.

Halt-and-ask rule: If the user provides only a citation without text, only text without citation, or an ambiguous jurisdiction (e.g., "the privacy law" without naming the state), stop and request the missing element. Do not infer jurisdiction from context clues; do not proceed on partial citations.

Non-US flag: If the citation, text, or context indicates a non-US source (e.g., "Regulation (EU) 2016/679", "Data Protection Act 2018", "PIPEDA", a foreign court reporter), halt and decline — this skill covers US law only. Recommend counsel qualified in that jurisdiction.

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Delegation Threshold & Accountability

Claude produces a draft analysis, never a final conclusion. Every output must:

1. Carry the header: DRAFT — Attorney Review Required | Reviewing Attorney: <name> | Privilege Status: <status>
2. Name the reviewing attorney (or carry an explicit <reviewing attorney: ___> placeholder the user must fill)
3. Re-state that citation verification, confirmation of current statutory text, ambiguity resolution, and the final legal conclusion remain the attorney's responsibility

Conclusory verbs without a Confidence Band create the appearance of a final legal conclusion the lawyer never signed off on — tag every conclusion with a band, or downgrade it to an open question for the attorney. Phrases like "Mandatory obligation," "Enforcement by Agency X," or "This applies to your client" stated flatly are exactly the failure mode this section exists to prevent.

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Confidence Bands

Every material finding in the output is tagged High / Medium / Low:

Flat-confidence outputs are not acceptable for ambiguous provisions. When in doubt between bands, downgrade — the downside of an under-confident finding (lawyer spends extra minutes verifying) is much smaller than the downside of an over-confident one (lawyer trusts a finding that was actually shaky).

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Escalation Logic (Halt-and-Route)

Halt the analysis and surface to the named attorney when any of the following occur. Escalation is mandatory; it overrides the instinct to complete the analysis, because finishing-anyway is how shaky readings become "the analysis said so."

1. The provision is silent on the user's fact pattern
2. Two provisions conflict — within the statute or against implementing regulations
3. Jurisdiction is unclear, the matter implicates choice-of-law between US states, or a non-US source appears
4. The statute references a term defined by case law rather than statute
5. Effective date or version is uncertain or amendments are pending
6. A US Constitutional question (federal or state), treaty question, or federal/state/local preemption question surfaces
7. The analysis would require interpreting agency adjudications
8. A local ordinance appears to conflict with state law, or a state statute appears to conflict with federal law

When escalating, state which trigger fired and what is needed from the attorney.

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Failure Modes

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Understanding the Legal Hierarchy

Key insight: Statutes give agencies authority to create regulations. Always read both the statute and implementing regulations — regulations often contain the operational details the statute left to agency discretion.

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Before Reading: Preliminary Steps

1. Verify currency and status

• Effective date (may be future)
• Pending amendments
• Consolidated/codified version located
• Implementing regulations identified
• Court decisions interpreting the statute checked
• Multiple effective dates for different provisions noted

The statute as passed is often not the statute as implemented — a statute with a future effective date may be amended before taking effect.

2. Understand the regulatory ecosystem

• Enforcement agency identified
• Agency's enforcement history checked
• Guidance documents, FAQs, informal interpretations gathered
• Agency posture noted (aggressive / permissive)

The same statutory language can mean different things depending on who enforces it.

3. Browse the structure first

Browse the index or table of contents before diving into a specific section. Understanding how the issue fits in the larger whole prevents misreading a provision as freestanding when it depends on a definition or applicability section elsewhere.

For unfamiliar statutes or codes, see references/statutory_structure.md — read it when first browsing a statute you have not seen before.

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Reading the Statute: Core Techniques

Start with definitions

Every word has meaning. Find the definitions section first and reference it constantly.

• Terms may have specific statutory meanings that differ from common usage
• Definitions may incorporate external standards by reference
• Definitions may depend on other definitions (interconnected webs)
• Watch whether definitions are exhaustive ("means") or illustrative ("includes")

Build a reference sheet of key definitions before analysing substantive provisions.

Read slowly and carefully

Statutes are dense. Every word and punctuation mark has meaning. Read each sentence multiple times; parse complex sentences into their component parts; do not skim. Statutory language rewards close attention and punishes skimming with confident misreads.

The operator words

These words have consistent legal functions across statutes:

Misreading "and" as "or" or "shall" as "may" fundamentally changes a provision's meaning — these are the top source of Low-confidence findings and the cheapest mistakes to avoid by reading slowly.

Track cross-references

When you encounter a reference to another statute or section, stop and read it. Cross-references may expand, limit, or modify the provision being analysed. Build a map of how sections relate.

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