Terms of Use

What This Site Is — and Isn’t

The rankings, category nets, sub-criterion scores, and narrative notes on this site are editorial judgments derived by applying a published rubric to documented historical evidence. They are scored against five calibration anchors (FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan), they will be revised as long-tail consequences resolve, and they intentionally diverge from other rankings in documented ways. The full reasoning is on the Methodology page.

Scores are not statements of objective fact about any person. They are the framework’s assessment of public conduct in public office, expressed in the framework’s vocabulary. Reasonable readers — and lens presets — will reach different conclusions. That is the point.

Eligibility

The site is intended for users who are at least sixteen years old, or thirteen years old in jurisdictions where that is the lawful minimum for an individual to provide their own consent to data processing. If you are under the age required to provide your own consent in your jurisdiction, you may only create an account with verifiable parental or guardian consent. By creating an account, you confirm that you meet these requirements. We do not knowingly collect personal information from users below the applicable age threshold; if you believe a user has provided us with personal data in violation of this section, please write to the editorial address and we will investigate.

Accounts

You may create an account to save category weights and bookmark scorecards. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in method secure. We may suspend or close accounts that are used to abuse the service — automated weight-stuffing, scripted account creation, or attempts to subvert the community-aggregate safeguards described in the Methodology.

You may delete your account at any time from your account settings, with the consequences described in the Privacy Policy.

Acceptable Use

• Do not attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the service or its underlying infrastructure.
• Do not scrape, mirror, or republish the data set in a way that misrepresents its provenance or strips the methodology context.
• Do not use the site to harass identifiable individuals, including living subjects of scoring.
• Do not introduce malware, run denial-of-service attacks, or attempt to evade rate limits.
• Do not create automated accounts or submit weight vectors intended to skew the community aggregate.

Living-Subject Correction & Takedown

We score four living former or sitting presidents — Obama, Trump T1, Biden, and Trump T2 — and we recognize the additional care this demands. If you are a subject of scoring, an authorized representative, or a reader who believes a specific evidence item is materially inaccurate, you may submit a correction or takedown request to editorial@presidential-scoring.org.

A request will move fastest when it identifies the specific sub-criterion and evidence item, explains what is inaccurate, and either cites a corrective source or attaches one. We commit, subject to operator availability and good-faith effort, to acknowledging receipt within seven days of a complete request, and to publishing a determination — correction, removal, or reasoned declination — within thirty days of acknowledgement. The determination period may be extended once for an additional thirty days where additional fact-finding is reasonably required, with notice to the requester. Determinations are logged in the public changelog.

Disagreement with an editorial judgment is not, on its own, grounds for removal. Demonstrable factual error in a cited piece of evidence is. Lens presets exist precisely so that readers who object to a value-frame can apply one that suits them.

Right of Reply

Subjects of scoring and their authorized representatives may submit a written response — a Right of Reply — addressed to a specific scorecard, sub-criterion, or evidence item. We commit to considering every reply in good faith and, where the reply is responsive and reasonably concise, publishing it alongside the scored content rather than removing the underlying material.

A Right of Reply is offered in addition to, not instead of, the correction and takedown process above. We may edit replies lightly for length or to remove material unrelated to the challenged item, but we will not alter their substantive position. Choosing not to exercise the Right of Reply does not waive any other remedy available to you.

Intellectual Property & License

We expect to publish the framework specification, scoring rubric, calibration anchors, and methodology copy under a Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 license, and to release site source code under the MIT license. Final license terms will be confirmed at launch and noted in the source repository. Until that confirmation, no license is granted beyond personal, non-commercial reading of the site, and all rights are reserved.

Third-party trademarks, including the names and likenesses of public figures, remain the property of their respective owners; their appearance on this site is nominative and editorial.

If you publish derivative rankings once the framework is openly licensed, please link back to the methodology page so readers can see the assumptions they are adopting along with the numbers.

Copyright Complaints (DMCA)

If you believe material on the site infringes your copyright, send a notice that meets the requirements of 17 U.S.C. § 512(c) to editorial@presidential-scoring.org. A complete notice must identify the work, identify the allegedly infringing material with enough specificity for us to locate it, include your contact information, include a statement made under penalty of perjury that you are the rights-holder or authorized to act on the rights-holder’s behalf, and include a statement that the use is not authorized by the rights-holder, its agent, or the law. A formal designated-agent contact will be registered with the US Copyright Office prior to public launch.

Disclaimers

The site is provided as is and as available, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We make no warranty that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Historical evidence, even from primary sources, is sometimes wrong; the framework reflects our best current reading of the record, not a final adjudication. Damages, where they exist, are addressed in the Limitation of Liability section below.

Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law: (a) neither the project, its maintainers, nor its contributors will be liable for any indirect, consequential, incidental, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenues, data, goodwill, or business opportunities, arising out of or related to your use of the site, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages; (b) the aggregate liability of the project, its maintainers, and its contributors arising out of or related to your use of the site is limited to the greater of (i) one hundred US dollars (US$100) or (ii) the total fees, if any, that you paid us in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. These limitations apply regardless of the theory of liability (contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, statute, or otherwise) and survive termination of these terms.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental, consequential, or certain other damages. In those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law. Nothing in this section is intended to exclude liability for fraud, willful misconduct, or any liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law.

Governing Law & Dispute Resolution

Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles. Final selection of the governing jurisdiction will be confirmed at launch with counsel and noted here.

Pre-suit informal resolution. Before filing any claim, you agree to contact us at the editorial address and attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute informally for at least sixty days. Filing a claim before the sixty-day period expires is a breach of these terms.

Exclusive venue. Any dispute not resolved informally will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in New Castle County, Delaware. Each party consents to personal jurisdiction there and waives any objection to venue.

Class-action waiver. Each party agrees to bring claims only in an individual capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, consolidated, or representative action. The parties waive any right to participate in a class action.

Carve-outs. Nothing in this section prevents either party from (a) seeking injunctive relief in a court of competent jurisdiction to protect intellectual property or confidential information, (b) bringing an individual claim in a small-claims court of competent jurisdiction, or (c) responding to a takedown, correction, or right-of-reply request under the procedures published on this site.

General Provisions

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any notices posted on the site, constitute the entire agreement between you and the project regarding the site and supersede any prior understandings on the subject.
• Severability. If a court of competent jurisdiction holds any provision unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining provisions will remain in full effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of substantially all assets, or to a successor entity that agrees to be bound by them.
• No third-party beneficiaries. Nothing in these Terms is intended to confer rights on any person other than you and the project.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond reasonable control, including network outages, infrastructure failures by upstream providers, and acts of government.
• Electronic communications. You consent to receive communications, agreements, and disclosures from us electronically. You agree that any electronic communications, agreements, and disclosures satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing.
• Export controls and sanctions. You may not access or use the site if you are located in a jurisdiction subject to comprehensive US embargoes (currently Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine), or if you are a person identified on the US Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals list or comparable restricted-party lists.
• Notice of changes. We will provide thirty days’ advance notice of material changes to these terms by updating the date at the top of the page and, where we have a working email for you, by sending an email notification.

Changes

We may update these terms as the project evolves. Material changes will be summarized in the public changelog and reflected in the date at the top of this page. Continued use of the site after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

Contact

Editorial and legal correspondence: editorial@presidential-scoring.org. For privacy and data-rights matters, see the Privacy Policy.