We ingest a statute or decision in its native textual form. A lexical analyzer separates operative verbs from definitional nouns, structuring the document as an abstract syntax tree of obligation, prohibition, and permission.
Each conditional branch is followed to its terminal state. Where one rule invokes another, a dependency edge is drawn. Circular references are flagged; silent defaults are surfaced as warnings in the margin.
Every proposition is tested against adversarial cases. We instantiate edge-case facts — the unhoused trustee, the uncooperative signatory, the statute predating its own definition — and observe where the logic collapses into silence or contradiction.
A sub-paragraph of a 1978 banking statute was discovered to reference its own future amendment, producing a temporal loop that remained invisible to every court that applied it for forty-one years. The loop is legible only when the statute is rendered as a call graph.
Procedural code specified a hearing for any "person so identified," but the definition of identification required the very person to appear. Tracing the dependency collapsed the defendant into a null state — present in law, unreachable in procedure.
An amendment passed in haste imposed an obligation that could only be fulfilled once a record of a transaction had been destroyed. We traced the contradiction and produced, in annotated form, the precise paragraph where time was asked to run backwards.
A definition section cross-referenced a glossary that had been repealed four years prior. The statute remained operative; its terms had, silently, no referent. A full dictionary audit of the jurisdiction is now underway.
End of session. The record is preserved; the instruments are returned to their cases. The next statute awaits on the table.
— LegalDebug · § 001.042.007 · TRACE COMPLETE