Method

Official sources first. Aggregate output second.

Harbor Legal Independent Index is built around source discipline. The project tracks legislatures, Congress, federal appeals circuits, and the Supreme Court, then reduces that public movement into records that can be reported, queried, and eventually exposed to MCP.

Legislation

All 50 states + Congress

Bills are collected from official legislative systems and Congress.gov where available. The source record matters as much as the bill record: freshness, coverage, collector behavior, and gaps should be visible.

Courts

Circuits and SCOTUS only

Court coverage is limited to federal appeals circuits and the Supreme Court, including opinions and selected order activity. Local courts and trial-level decisions stay out of scope for the MVP.

Classification

Areas of law

Records are mapped to plain-language domains so people and agents can ask about legal movement without knowing every statutory code, bill number, or case citation in advance.

Interface

Read-only first

Public access should begin with cacheable read-only endpoints: reports, source status, aggregate movement, and topic summaries. Write-side ingest stays private.

What we don't claim

Being clear about the limits

HLII is not a legal research database yet. The first durable product is source tracking and aggregate legal movement.

Court coverage is intentionally narrow. Trial courts and administrative bodies are outside scope, even when their decisions are important locally.

Source freshness depends on official systems. Some states publish slowly, change markup, or require custom collection handling.

The index describes public-record movement. It does not predict outcomes, rank legal importance, or provide legal advice.