Sources & evidence

Where the record comes from.

Primary documents first. Reporting corroborates; it does not replace.

Justicara reporting is grounded in the documents that constitute the public account — judgments, statutes, gazettes, parliamentary records and official data. Everything published here is sorted into one of three tiers before it can support a claim.

How we verify Corrections log

Source hierarchyThree tiers

Tier 01: Primary record — a claim can rest on this alone
Tier 02: Corroborating report — supports, never substitutes
Tier 03: Pointer only — may lead us to a document, is not the evidence
Default: Sources are named and linked wherever the document is public

A report that relies on Tier 02 without a Tier 01 document says so in the text.

What counts as evidence

Three tiers, one standard

The tier decides what a document is allowed to do in a report — not how interesting it is.

Tier 01

Primary record

A claim can rest on this alone.

Documents produced by the institution itself, obtained from the institution's own record.

Court judgments, orders and case filings
Constitutional text, acts, ordinances and statutory rules
Official gazettes and government notifications
Parliamentary proceedings, committee records and submissions
Election Commission notifications, results and official data
Treaty texts and UN human rights mechanism documents
Audit reports, commissions of inquiry and regulatory filings

Tier 02

Corroborating report

Supports a primary document. Never substitutes for one.

Established news agencies and rights organisations with published methodology and a correction record of their own.

Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press wire reporting
Dawn and comparable Pakistani newspapers of record
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International research
International Commission of Jurists legal analysis
World Bank and IMF data and country reporting
Peer-reviewed legal and social science scholarship

Tier 03

Pointer only

May lead us to a document. Cannot be the evidence.

Material we may follow up but will not build a published claim on, however widely it circulates.

Anonymous social media posts and unattributed screenshots
Unverified leaked material without a chain of custody
Partisan aggregators and advocacy press releases
AI-generated summaries of documents we have not read ourselves
Single-source claims we cannot independently confirm

Commonly referenced

The institutions behind the documents

These bodies publish the records Justicara reporting most often draws on. Listing them is a description of our reading, not a claim of any relationship with them.

Pakistan

SCSupreme Court of Pakistan
HCProvincial High Courts
NANational Assembly
SENSenate of Pakistan
ECPElection Commission of Pakistan
SBPState Bank of Pakistan
FBRFederal Board of Revenue
AGPAuditor General of Pakistan

International

UNUnited Nations bodies and treaty mechanisms
OHCHRUN Human Rights Office
ICJInternational Commission of Jurists
HRWHuman Rights Watch
AIAmnesty International
WBWorld Bank
IMFInternational Monetary Fund
ILOInternational Labour Organization

None of these organisations endorse, fund or review Justicara. They are named solely to identify publicly available records commonly cited in our reporting.

How sources are handled

Rules that apply to every citation

These hold whether a document is a Supreme Court judgment or a single line in a gazette notification.

Citation: Where a document is public, we link to it directly. Where it is not, we say where it came from and why it cannot be linked.
Attribution: Strong characterisations are attributed to the named source that made them. They are not restated as Justicara's own finding.
Translation: Where a source is in Urdu or another language, the original wording governs. Any translation is our own unless stated.
Anonymity: Sources are named by default. Anonymity is granted only where identification carries a credible risk, and the reason is stated.
Gaps: Where a record is missing, sealed or withheld, we report the gap rather than infer what it might contain.

Think we have leaned on the wrong document?

Send the primary source. Scrutiny of our sourcing is welcome and is answered.

Write to the editor

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