# Responsible America — Authority to Act Methodology

Status: real, source-backed factual explainer, built this milestone,
implementing Civic Clarity's own already-adopted "Who Has Authority?"
module (see §1). Companion to `docs/promise-ledger-methodology.md`,
`docs/ig-watchdog-tracking-methodology.md`,
`docs/political-money-tracking-methodology.md`,
`docs/federal-contracts-tracking-methodology.md`, and
`docs/middle-class-timeline-methodology.md`.

Last reviewed: 2026-08-11.

## 1. Where this comes from

This is not a new module invented for this milestone. Civic Clarity's own
adopted navigation — cited directly on `understand-government.html`
("Government Explained · Bills and Votes · Executive Actions · Budget and
Spending · Committees · Officials and Institutions · **Who Has
Authority?** · Find My Representatives · Promises and Outcomes · Ask
Civic Clarity") — already names "Who Has Authority?" as one of its ten
navigation modules. This tool implements that module directly: a
standalone explainer of who actually holds the constitutional or
institutional power to act on a given question, distinct from the
per-reform `constitutional_authority` fields `reform.html` already
renders for each of the 30 published reforms (see
`data/original-scope-parity-audit.json`'s `tool-authority-to-act` entry —
those per-reform fields remain in place; this tool adds the standalone,
cross-reform lookup the parity audit's own `next_implementation_milestone`
had flagged as not yet scoped).

## 2. What this is, and what it is not

This is **factual explainer content, not policy advocacy**. It never
scores, ranks, or recommends a policy outcome, and it never states or
implies that one branch, chamber, or level of government "should" have
more or less power than the Constitution and current statute actually
give it. Every record answers four fixed questions:

1. **Who has authority** — the specific office, chamber, agency, or level
   of government that holds this power, and its constitutional/statutory
   basis.
2. **What they can do** — the specific action, stated precisely.
3. **What they cannot do alone** — the real limit of this authority, even
   for a genuinely unilateral power (which still names the checks that do
   apply: elections, impeachment, a later Congress amending the statute).
4. **What other body is required** — named explicitly, or `null` only
   where no other body's approval is needed for this specific action to
   take legal effect.

Every record also names its `primary_source_or_legal_basis` (a specific
constitutional clause, statute citation, or case citation) and a real,
historical `real_world_example` — never a hypothetical or invented
illustration. See `data/schemas/authority-to-act-example.schema.json`.

## 3. The seed dataset: nine patterns, nine real examples

Added 2026-08-11 as this tool's first conversion from nothing to real,
source-backed content (no architecture-only phase preceded it — the
schema, seed data, and page were built together this pass). Selection
criteria and full research notes are in
`research/tool-authority-to-act-seed/research-plan.md`. One example per
required pattern:

| Pattern | Example | Primary source |
|---|---|---|
| Executive, acting alone | Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon (Proclamation 4311, 1974-09-08) | U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1 |
| Executive, but Congress must act too | The Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Versailles (1919-1920) | U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 2 |
| Congress legislates | The 2018-2019 lapse-in-appropriations shutdown (35 days) | U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7 |
| Senate confirmation | Ruth Bader Ginsburg's confirmation, 96-3 (1993-08-03) | U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 2 |
| Delegated agency rulemaking | OSHA's 2021 COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard | 29 U.S.C. § 655 |
| Courts reviewing legality | Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) | Marbury v. Madison |
| State authority | State election administration under the Elections Clause, with HAVA (2002) as the congressional-override example | U.S. Const. art. I, § 4, cl. 1 |
| Local authority | Municipal zoning power (Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 1926) | 272 U.S. 365 (1926) |
| Federal Reserve independence | The Federal Reserve Act of 1913's statutory design | Federal Reserve Act, 38 Stat. 251 (1913) |

The agency-rulemaking and judicial-review examples are deliberately
cross-linked: OSHA's 2021 Emergency Temporary Standard is cited as the
`real_world_example` for delegated rulemaking, and the Supreme Court's
stay of that same standard in *NFIB v. Department of Labor*, 595 U.S. 109
(2022), is cited within it — a reader can see the same real event from
both the agency's and the court's side, without needing a tenth
duplicate record.

## 4. Why this does not implicate the named-person legal-review gate

Several examples describe the official actions of real, named individuals
(Ford, Nixon, Wilson, Ginsburg). Per `docs/legal-review-policy.md` §3, the
named-person legal-review trigger is content "describing a named real
person's conduct in terms that could reasonably be read as an assertion
of unlawful or unethical conduct." None of these records do that: each
states a neutral, official, publicly-documented action (a pardon was
issued; a treaty vote failed; a nominee was confirmed) without
characterizing anyone's conduct as wrongful. This is the same distinction
`docs/legal-review-policy.md` itself draws between "allegation vs.
adjudicated fact" and a plain factual description of an official act —
this content is squarely the latter, so the heavier named-person claim
machinery used elsewhere on this platform (e.g.
`claim-006-pelosi-family-trading-controversy.json`, and the Promise
Ledger's and IG/Watchdog's own named-person claims) is not invoked here,
per this task's own instruction not to create a new standard where the
existing one does not apply.

## 5. What would need to be true before this becomes comprehensive

A larger library of patterns (shared/concurrent authority, interstate
compacts, tribal sovereignty, territorial governments, and international
treaty-body relationships are all real additional patterns not yet
covered), and a per-reform cross-link from each of the 30 published
reforms' own `constitutional_authority` field to the matching
Authority-to-Act pattern, once that mapping is scoped. The current
9-example seed demonstrates the pattern set the task named "at minimum";
it does not attempt full coverage of every institutional arrangement in
American government.