What is legal-source traceability?
Legal-source traceability connects every governance field, every obligation, and every decision to the specific article, paragraph, or annex of the regulation it derives from.
When the obligation matrix shows a transparency requirement, legal-source traceability tells you it comes from Art. 13 of the EU AI Act. When a screening result classifies a system as high-risk, the traceability shows the specific Annex III category. This is not decoration — it is the connection between operational governance and legal authority that makes the governance record defensible.
Key points
- Every obligation in the governance record must trace back to a specific legal provision — not just "the AI Act" but Art. 9(2)(a) or Annex IV, section 2.
- Legal-source traceability enables precise impact analysis when the regulation changes: which provisions changed, which obligations are affected, which systems need re-screening.
- It provides auditors with direct verification: they can trace any governance requirement from the system record back to its legal basis.
- Legal-source traceability and legal-version anchoring work together: traceability shows which provision, anchoring shows which version.
Why it matters
Governance requirements that cannot be traced to specific legal provisions are assertions without authority. When an auditor asks "why is this obligation in your record?", the answer must be a specific legal reference — not a general reference to the regulation. Legal-source traceability makes every governance requirement verifiable against the regulatory text.
How EAB approaches this
EAB's Legal Source Mapping connects governance fields to specific CELEX references and article provisions. The Obligation Matrix shows the legal basis for each obligation. Legal Decision Context preserves the regulatory reasoning behind governance decisions.