Editorial policy

Each statute page shows the full text of one section of the Arizona Revised Statutes, and a short plain-English summary of it. The summary is a reading aid. The statute text is what counts.

A section goes through these steps, in this order. If any step fails, the page is not published.

1. The section is found. The citation must match exactly one current section in our copy of the Arizona statutes, and that copy must have text.
2. Our text is compared with azleg.gov. We fetch the section's live text from the Arizona Legislature's website and compare it with the text we hold, ignoring differences in spacing. If they differ, the page is held until the text is refreshed from azleg.gov. Text can differ because a section was amended after our copy was made.
3. The section is checked for duplication. The text must not repeat itself internally, a defect we found in some source data and fixed.
4. The summary is drafted with AI. The AI is given the section's own text and asked to summarize only what that text says.
5. The summary passes a gate of checks run by code. The checks are string and lookup operations. None of them is an AI model's opinion.

The gate has these checks:

• The section resolved to exactly one current document with text.
• The section text is not internally duplicated.
• The summary is one to three sentences. (Shorter and clearer beats longer; more than three is refused.)
• Every figure in the summary (days, dollars, years, ages, percentages) appears in the section text.
• Any clause in the summary that states an obligation (“must”, “shall”, “may not”) has its key words present in the section text.
• The summary cites no other A.R.S. section unless that section is one of the page's linked related sections.

A page that fails any check is not published.

The obligation check works by matching words, not by understanding meaning. A summary can pass every check and still be incomplete, or put an idea more simply than the statute does. Summaries are generated by AI and are not reviewed by an attorney. That is why the full statute text sits on the same page, and why every page tells you to consult a licensed attorney for advice about your situation.

Each statute page shows the date its text was last compared with the official text on azleg.gov. The comparison is made when a page is published, and every published page is re-checked once a month.

If the official text still matches, the page gets the new date. If the official text has changed, the page keeps its old date and is flagged for review. It gets a new date only after its text has been refreshed from azleg.gov and its summary has passed the checks again.

The Arizona Legislature amends statutes throughout the year, so a page can be out of date between checks. The date tells you when the check was made. For the authoritative current text, use azleg.gov.

FAQ answers are also generated by AI from Arizona statute text. Every claim carries the section it comes from. Code checks that each cited section exists in our text and that every figure in a claim appears in the section it cites. Where it is unclear whether Arizona or federal law governs a question, the answer is flagged for a person to decide, and it is not published automatically.

• Pending legislation. Introduced bills, committee recommendations and ballot referrals are not law and are not cited.
• Sponsored content. Attorneys and firms have no influence over ClearStatute pages.

Every statute and FAQ page has a “Report an error” link, and you can write to us from the contact page. Tell us the page, the sentence or figure you think is wrong, and where you checked it.

When a report comes in, we compare the page with the official text on azleg.gov. If the page is wrong, we either correct it and run it through the same checks again, or remove it from search results and the site's listings until it is corrected. We do not leave a wrong page up with a warning above it. We do not promise a response time.

Statute text comes from the Open US Law dataset (CC BY 4.0) and, for some sections, directly from azleg.gov. Attribution and licence details are on the legal page.