Can a federal filing cite an AI-found case?

Yes, but the citation should be independently verified against a source route such as CourtListener, an official reporter, or the issuing court.

Are district-court cases controlling?

Usually no. Treat district-court authority as persuasive unless a local rule or procedural setting says otherwise.

Jurisdiction hub

U.S. Federal legal research

Federal research usually starts with statutes and regulations, then moves into circuit authority and district-court treatment.

Attorney-review checklist

Confirm whether controlling authority is Supreme Court, circuit, district, agency, or persuasive.
Check rule amendments, statutory effective dates, and regulatory currentness before relying on text.
Preserve public source links in the work product audit trail.

15 U.S.C. § 1681

Read a source-linked statute page with related cases and practitioner takeaways.

28 U.S.C. § 1927

Check the federal sanctions provision for unreasonable and vexatious litigation conduct.

15 U.S.C. § 1692e

Review the FDCPA false-representation provision before citing consumer-debt authority.

11 U.S.C. § 362

Open the automatic-stay source route for bankruptcy research and citation checks.

AI research duties

Review the practical duty to verify AI-assisted legal research before filing.

Federal hallucination audit

Paste draft text and block unsupported case, statute, and regulation citations.

Public source map

U.S. Code

Use Cornell LII or the Office of Law Revision Counsel for source checks.

eCFR

Regulatory sections should be checked against the current eCFR text.

CourtListener

Good first pass for opinions, docket context, and citation lookup.

Research order of operations

U.S. Federal authority workflow

Start with the highest controlling source, then record whether each cited authority is binding, persuasive, amended, superseded, or limited by local practice. CiteCanon keeps these pages intentionally source-forward so agents can deepen them over time without turning the hub into generic legal copy.

Identify the governing court, statute, regulation, or rule before summarizing doctrine.
Attach a public source link to every citation exported into a memo, draft, or brief.
Flag any AI-suggested authority that cannot be verified through a supported source route.

Related verification routes

Jurisdiction pages work best when they connect source research to citation checks, AI review limits, and public-source policy instead of sending crawlers into private workspaces.

Next agent passes should add local rule links, controlling-court tables, citation examples, currentness checks, and state-specific drafting notes for U.S. Federal.