Authority health
The validity of a legal proposition over time, represented as a multi-dimensional composite attached to the proposition itself rather than as a single flag on the whole case.
First used in The Promise Fulfilled
A case is not simply good law or bad law. One holding may be overruled while another is narrowed and a third remains fully operative.
An authority-health composite captures at least three things: explicit negative treatment keyed to specific propositions; limitation and distinguishing density in the citation network, which signals erosion before any formal overruling; and change over time. It must also encode the difference between complete invalidity, as with Loper Bright's overruling of Chevron, and qualified validity, as with Kisor's narrowing of Auer through threshold conditions.
Institute papers call the absence of this representation authority-health blindness, one of five structural failure categories in document-level legal AI. Salient overrulings are found anyway; quiet erosion is not.
Related terms
Related frameworks
Case Treatment Taxonomy
Each treatment of an earlier case by a later one is classified holding by holding, along three dimensions (scope, severity and mechanism), into one of four families, and when in doubt the classification over-flags rather than under-flags.
The Proposition-Usability Model
A cited proposition is usable only when it is still valid, governs in the forum and procedural posture, helps the represented party, and has not already been rejected in the jurisdiction.