Primary authority

A primary authority is a document that establishes the law on a particular issue, such as a case decision or legislative act. The search for applicable primary authority is an important part of the process of legal research.

In the United States, examples of primary authority include the verbatim texts of:

Constitutions;
Statutes (whether codified or uncodified);
Court opinions^[1];
Rules of court procedure;
Rules of evidence;
Rules governing the conduct of lawyers;
Administrative regulations;
Executive orders;
Treaties and certain other international law materials;
Municipal charters and ordinances.

To be considered primary authority, a document does not have to be physically printed or published by a government entity, as long as the document purports to be and actually is a verbatim re-print of the applicable statute, regulation, court opinion, etc. That is, many lawyers, legal scholars, government agencies and others use verbatim re-prints of texts published by private commercial law publishing companies.

The term primary authority is used to distinguish primary authority materials from texts considered to be Secondary authority.

References

Statsky, W. (1997). Introduction to paralegalism: persepectives, problems, and skills. 5th ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

Notes

^ Although the texts of court opinions are primary authority, care should be taken when analyzing the texts to determine which parts are binding as holdings in the case (see Stare decisis, Precedent and Ratio decidendi), and which parts are non-binding (see Obiter dictum).