It's not clear from this question what level of detail you were hoping to see in answers, or how technical they ought to be. If the point was to set up the opportunity to present your research findings as an answer, it would be better to re-work the question so that it matches and properly introduces the information you found.

It was the latter (i.e., present finding in an answer). How would you clarify the question? The question arose from my ignorance of how a browser makes sure that a website's SSL certificate is valid. (Hm, perhaps I should put "HTTP" in the question.) I also aimed to ask a fairly general question to invite answers of all levels and because this question applies in other contexts as well, not just requests in the browser. The answer I found is a good summary, bereft of unnecessary details, but I would love to see more technical answers. (Although, not sure how they would look like, because I purposely didn't specify a tech stack, so would it be more about the relevant ASN.1 structures in a certificate?)