{"id":224,"slug":"zittrain-reference-rot-supreme-court-2014","title":"Zittrain et al. (Harvard Law 2014): 50% of URLs in U.S. Supreme Court opinions suffer reference rot","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["content-architecture","longevity-architecture"],"reference_body":"**Quote (Zittrain, Albert, Lessig, Harvard Law Review 2014):**\n\n> \"More than 70% of the URLs within the above mentioned journals, and **50% of the URLs within U.S. Supreme Court opinions suffer reference rot**.\"\n\n**Source:** Harvard Law Review, Zittrain/Albert/Lessig 2014.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified (foundational academic study).\n\n**The 12-year-old finding is still the strongest single argument for URL-design-as-permanence-design.** When a Supreme Court opinion's citation infrastructure rots at 50%, that's a measure of how seriously the open web takes URL stability — i.e., not very. The Candid counter-position: **slugs are a 10-year design decision, not a SEO tactic**. See [[rule-url-design-as-permanence-design]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"ahrefs-14b-pages-96-55pct-no-traffic","title":"Ahrefs (14B-page study): 96.55% of pages get zero Google traffic — supersedes older 90.63% figure","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"decay-vs-compound-matrix","title":"Reference framework: which website dimensions decay vs compound over 10 years (12-dimension matrix)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"rule-url-design-as-permanence-design","title":"RULE: Treat URL/slug design as a 10-year decision. Never let a slug change without a 301 redirect.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"research-brief-built-to-last","title":"Research brief: Built to Last — why most SMB sites rebuild every 3-4 years (piece 5 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"nyt-link-half-life-15-years-13pct-content-drift","title":"Link rot: NYT external links 1996-2019 show ~15-year half-life; 13% of \"live\" links no longer point to original content","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"link-rot-mitigation-9-step-plan","title":"CANDID REFERENCE: 9-step link-rot mitigation plan — archive on capture, verbatim quote, persistent IDs, quarterly check","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"rule-capture-archive-snapshot-at-citation-time","title":"RULE: Capture an archive snapshot (Perma.cc / archive.org) at the moment of citing any web source. Quote verbatim.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T19:58:12.843Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T19:58:12.843Z"}