Secondary authority

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In law, a secondary authority is an authority purporting to explain the meaning or applicability of the actual verbatim texts of primary authorities (such as constitutions, statutes, case law, administrative regulations, executive orders, treaties, or similar legal instruments).

Some secondary authority materials are written and published by governments to explain the laws in simple, non-technical terms, while other secondary authority materials are written and published by private companies, non-profit organizations, or other groups or individuals. Some examples of primarily American secondary authority are:

In the United States, various legal scholars disagree over whether legislative histories in the form of texts of congressional committee reports should be considered to be secondary authority or, alternatively, primary authority. [1]

Although secondary authorities are sometimes used in legal research [2] (especially, to allow a researcher to gain a preliminary, overall understanding of an unfamiliar area of law) and are sometimes even cited by courts in deciding cases, [3] secondary authorities are generally afforded less weight than the actual texts of primary authority. However, some treatises are cited so frequently as to enjoy a select status among legal authorities. [4]

Textbooks are generally not considered as secondary authorities apart from certain long-standing and well-reputed ones.

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Computer-assisted legal research (CALR) or computer-based legal research is a mode of legal research that uses databases of court opinions, statutes, court documents, and secondary material. Electronic databases make large bodies of case law easily available. Databases also have additional benefits, such as Boolean searches, evaluating case authority, organizing cases by topic, and providing links to cited material. Databases are available through paid subscription or for free.

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Edict of government is a technical term associated with the United States Copyright Office's guidelines and practices that comprehensively includes laws, which advises that such submissions will neither be accepted nor processed for copyright registration. It is based on the principle of public policy that citizens must have unrestrained access to the laws that govern them. Similar provisions occur in most, but not all, systems of copyright law; the main exceptions are in those copyright laws which have developed from English law, under which the copyright in laws rests with the Crown or the government.

Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., No. 18-1150, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding "whether the government edicts doctrine extends to—and thus renders uncopyrightable—works that lack the force of law, such as the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated" (OCGA). On April 27, 2020, the Court ruled 5–4 that the OCGA cannot be copyrighted because the OCGA's annotations were "authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties"; thus the Court found that the annotations fall under the government edicts doctrine and are ineligible for copyright.

References

  1. Compare G.L. Richmond, Federal Tax Research: Guide to Materials and Techniques, page 2, fn.4 (4th ed. 1990) and C.L. Kunz, D.A. Schmedemann, C.P. Erlinder & M.P. Downs, The Process of Legal Research, page 3 (1986).
  2. "The basics of legal research". Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 3 November 2021.
  3. Dana Neacsu & Paul D. Callister, "The Persistent Treatise," 116 Law Library Journal 257 (2024).
  4. Dana Neacsu & Paul D. Callister, "The Persistent Treatise," 116 Law Library Journal 257 (2024).