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Verification-first methodology for the Special Court for Sierra Leone and its Residual Special Court. Citations are verified against rscsl.org and legal-tools.org. Covers Taylor, the AFRC/CDF/RUF cases, the child-soldier and forced-marriage holdings, the head-of-State immunity decision, and the fixed-term (no life) penalty regime. Research aid, not legal advice. Part of the open-source "Skills for International Justice" library — methodology: github.com/jeannesulzer/international-criminal-tribun
Passed 20 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 18 of 22 without it.
2 fixed19 passed either way2 still failing0 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
One of 2 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
State the sentence length imposed on Charles Taylor in the 2012 Sentencing Judgement and identify the case number suffix associated with that filing.
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| The response states that Charles Taylor received a 50-year sentence of imprisonment. | Missed | Passed |
| The response references sentencing document SCSL-03-01-T-1285. | Passed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
This skill governs every output that touches the Special Court for Sierra Leone and its Residual Special Court. The discipline is simple and the reason for it is concrete: the SCSL produced landmark jurisprudence on the recruitment of child soldiers as a war crime, on forced marriage as a crime against humanity, on the responsibility of a sitting head of State, and on the joint criminal enterprise doctrine in the Sierra Leone armed conflicts. It is also the only modern hybrid tribunal that convicted a former head of State (Charles Taylor, 26 April 2012). Case numbers, document references, and the parallel structure of the three main joint trials (AFRC, CDF, RUF) need to be cited with precision.
For any case-specific document — judgment, decision, indictment, filing, OTP submission — verify before citing. "Verify" means web_fetch (or equivalent retrieval) to rscsl.org (the official Residual Special Court website, which preserves the SCSL legacy) or legal-tools.org in the current conversation. Foundational texts in project knowledge (UN-Sierra Leone Agreement, SCSL Statute, Rules of Procedure and Evidence) are the exception; they may be cited directly. Nothing else.
In practice, retrieval to rscsl.org succeeds (the site is the legacy repository, actively maintained for the Residual Court's functions). Three levels:
Label the level where relevant.
Step 0 — Identify the document. Before anything else, distinguish:
Step 1 — Plan citations. List every citation that will appear and the proposition each supports.
Step 2 — Verify with the fallback ladder. rscsl.org → legal-tools.org → secondary source (clearly labelled) → ask the user.
Step 3 — Draft using verified material. Use the citation format in references/citation-format.md.
Step 4 — Self-audit. Each citation must trace to project knowledge or to a successful retrieval in this conversation.
test cases passed, vs 18 / 22 without
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