Each concept is read twice: whether the approach carries it over, and whether the approach's own sources claim it. A concept that the approach claims but does not carry over is a shortfall. A concept that it neither claims nor carries over is an omission, which marks a gap in the field rather than a failure of the work.
Recorded dissent
PartialShortfall · partially preservedDefinition (Appellate practice)
When judges disagree, the losing view is not erased. It is published alongside the majority's, signed and reasoned. This has two effects. It forces the majority to answer a stated objection, which makes the majority's own reasoning legible. It also keeps the rejected theory on record, so that it remains available to become the majority view later.
Analysis
The closest mechanism is HYPO's three-ply argument. A point is met with a full counter-argument that distinguishes the cited precedent and cites another one in response. The opposing position is therefore stated in reasoned form rather than suppressed, and both lines of argument can be read. Everything that the word 'recorded' implies is missing. HYPO never issues a ruling, so there is no majority for a minority view to stand against. The counter-argument is also generated for the occasion rather than entered into the case base, where a later argument could use it. Caputo's (2024) bracketing preserves only the fact that a disagreement exists, not a signed and reasoned account of the losing side. The overruling benchmark works on case pairs but never asks a model to read the dissents that those opinions actually contain. No source asserts published dissent. However, the pluralism argument (parties who disagree still act together, and the disagreement survives the decision) only works if the rejected view remains available.
Overruling with provenance
AbsentOmissionDefinition (Common-law practice)
The law can reverse itself when a precedent has become unworkable, unjust, or simply overtaken by events, but only in the open. The overruling decision names what it overturns and why. The change therefore has a traceable history instead of being quietly removed from the record.
Analysis
Nothing in this approach reverses a holding that it has itself made. HYPO's case base is a static index. Its typical move against an unwelcome precedent is distinguishing, which confines that case to its facts and deliberately leaves it in force. Caputo (2024) supplies no procedure by which a settled agreement can become unsettled. The benchmark's 236 pairs are real reversals, but they belong to the Supreme Court's record rather than to any artifact in this approach. The benchmark keeps only the bare relation between the two cases and drops the stated reasons, which are what make a change traceable. Grading whether a model can detect that one case overruled another is a claim to measure that capability. It is not a claim to perform an overruling with provenance.
Incompletely theorized agreement
PartialNot claimedDefinition (Cass R. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, 1996)
This is agreement on what to do in the case at hand, while the deeper principle is explicitly left unresolved. The agreement can be on an outcome, a rule, or a mid-level principle, and the comprehensive worldview underneath is set aside. Courts do this constantly, because it lets people who disagree about theory still act together, one case at a time.
Analysis
The approach carries over the bracketing part of the concept. HYPO reasons entirely in dimensions and factor comparisons drawn from prior cases and never moves up to a general theory. Caputo (2024) makes leaving the deep principle unresolved its explicit design aim. The agreement part is not built anywhere. In Sunstein's account, this is the part that matters most, in which parties who disagree commit to a narrow outcome and act on it. HYPO issues no holding at all. It generates arguments for both sides and stops. Caputo (2024) offers no enforcer, institutional or computational, that holds anyone to the bracket. The result is preserved disagreement without the action it is supposed to enable. The third paper runs the opposite way and fixes one ground-truth label per pair. Caputo (2024) names the concept, but only as a goal for a system that it does not build, so no source claims an artifact that realizes it.