If the law were simple, certain, and uncontested, lawyers’ work would be very different from what it is, and their research would go much more quickly.  Statutes, judicial decisions, and other sources of law are often subtle, confusing, self- or mutually contradictory, and/or amenable to divergent interpretations.  Spindle Law is designed to handle the complexities of law in the real world, not by simplification but by rendering them intelligible through abstraction and organization.  I thought it would be worth explaining how, by way of a hypothetical example.  In order to follow, you need to know that 1) we organize the law hierarchically, through “topics” and “rules,” 2) topics include “splits,” which are really issues about which there is conflicting authority, 3) rules include “general rules” and “exceptions,” 4) we use the term “rule” broadly, to include any proposition of law for which one might cite authority—including, among other things, what some people call a “standard,” 5) we associate authorities with rules they support, and 6) we take a broad view of what counts as support—an authority may be cited as support for any rule that it can reasonably be read to support.

This last point (number 6) is crucial to the representation of complexity in Spindle.  If two cases state opposite rules, both rules are welcome in Spindle.  If a single case—even a single sentence of a single case—can be read as supporting any of multiple mutually inconsistent rules, Spindle can accommodate all of them, with the same decision as support for each. Spindle isn’t exclusive. Rather, it allows an unlimited number of reasonable and helpful readings of the law to be represented in a way that reveals them and makes them accessible and usable.

So, imagine the following statute and case law concerning a requirement that applicants for something or another file a form with a certain government agency by a certain time:

Statute A:  “The form is due to the government agency 30 days after the applicant’s birthday.”

Case 1:  “Applicant delivered form to agency by hand 40 days after applicant’s birthday.  Agency refused to accept it.  Applicant brought this action to compel agency to accept it. . . . The agency is not required to accept the form after the due date.”  Judgment for the agency.

Case 2:  “Applicant mailed form to agency 20 days after applicant’s birthday.  Agency received it 31 days after applicant’s birthday and refused to accept it.  Applicant brought this action to compel agency to accept it. . . . Applicant took reasonable steps to ensure that the form would be delivered on or before the due date.  Moreover, applicant was entitled to rely on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the form in a reasonable time.  Case 1 is not to the contrary.”  Judgment for the applicant.

Case 3:  “Applicant mailed form to agency 25 days after applicant’s birthday but without a zip code.  Agency received it 31 days after applicant’s birthday and refused to accept it.  Applicant brought this action to compel agency to accept it. . . . As the Case 2 court held, ‘[a]pplicant was entitled to rely on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the form in a reasonable time.’ “  Judgment for the applicant.

Case 4:  “Applicant mailed form to agency 25 days after the applicant’s birthday after being told by a representative of the agency that as long it was postmarked within 30 days after the applicant’s birthday it would be accepted.  Agency received it 31 days after applicant’s birthday and refused to accept it.  Applicant lived about a 20 minute walk from the agency headquarters.  Applicant brought action to compel agency to accept it. . . .  ‘The form is due to the government agency 30 days after the applicant’s birthday.’  Statute A.  ‘The agency is not required to accept the form after the due date.’  Case 1.”  Judgment for the agency.

Following is one possible way to represent this hierarchically, roughly in the manner we might do in Spindle Law.  Please keep in mind that this demonstrates something about how we organize information, not how we display it (among many other differences, on the site we don’t actually put this particular combination of information on a single page), so the benefits the researcher reaps from the organization will not be altogether clear.  Here I’ve put rules in orange and authorities in blue.  That has nothing to do with how we display anything in Spindle, either.  My purpose here is to show, through a simple example, how one can represent certain kinds of legal complexities.

Rule:  The form is due to the government agency 30 days after the applicant’s birthday.

Authority: Statute A.
Authority: Case 1.
Authority: Case 2.
Authority: Case 3.
Authority: Case 4.

Split:  Whether the agency may refuse to accept the form if the form arrives after the due date

Rule:  Yes.

Authority: Case 4.
Authority: See Case 1. [You don't have to read the case as creating an absolute rule like this, but it's reasonable to read it this way.  One could add a comment to this effect.]

General Rule:  Generally, yes.

Authority: Case 2.
Authority: Case 3.
Authority: See Case 1. [You don't have to read the case as stating a mere general rule, but it's reasonable to read it this way, since the facts didn't raise any potential exceptions.  One could add a comment to this effect.]

Exception:  Agency must accept form after due date where applicant took reasonable steps to ensure that the form would be delivered on time.

Authority: Case 2. [You don't have to  read the case as requiring this.  Based on the court's language, it's possible that the outcome would have been different if the applicant had relied on a party other than the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the form.  Whether the use of the Postal Service was part of what made the applicant's actions "reasonable" is also unclear.  It sounds like a facet of the reasonable analysis, but could the use of "moreover" suggest that the court might not have thought so?  Regardless, it's reasonable to read it as supporting this exception.  One could add a parenthetical and/or a comment elucidating some of this.]
Authority: Case 3.

Rule:  Agency must accept the application of an applicant who mailed his form with the U.S. Postal Service and whose form would have been delivered on time had the U.S. Postal Service not failed to deliver it within a reasonable time.

Authority: Case 2.
Authority: Case 3.

Rule:  Agency must accept the application of an applicant who mailed his form with the U.S. Postal Service five days before the due date without including a zip code.

Authority: See Case 3. [Case three doesn't actually say this, but it's apparently implied.]

As I hope this makes clear, Spindle has a place for every reasonable interpretation of the law, and when the interpretations are put in their place, illuminates the contours of the law.