Yet who will deny that a plug-in or service that takes that statement and tells you the degree to which it can be considered true would be immensely useful and hugely popular? For this reason it’s worth it to someone to do the legwork. But the challenges and implications are serious.

Schultz’s script, which he calls “Truth Goggles,” (notGoogles, as I originally wrote) is still in a very early state. At the moment he is using Politifact and NewsTrust APIs as his sources, and has a system of breaking down articles into snippets, which are essentially chunks containing a verifiable claim and some context.

This technology would seem to be a way to use an algorithm to assert the holding of a case, or determine automagically how closely it adheres to precedent.