Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
Sources of law are the origins of laws, the binding rules that enable any state to govern its territory. The terminology was already used in Rome by Cicero as a metaphor referring to the "fountain" ("fons" in Latin) of law. Technically, anything that can create, change, or cancel any right or law is considered a source of law. [1]
A voice, its recording, the transcript of the recording, a newspaper reporter taking notes from the transcript, and a newspaper report of the notes are all primary sources, but some editors believe that the newspaper report—the least accurate of these sources—is a secondary source and therefore automatically a better source for all purposes ...
The Restatements of the Law is one of the most respected and well-used sources of secondary authority, covering nearly every area of common law. While considered secondary authority (compare to primary authority), the authoritativeness of the Restatements of the Law is evidenced by their acceptance by courts throughout the United States.
A secondary source contrasts with a primary, or original, source of the information being discussed. A primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation or it may be a document created by such a person. A secondary source is one that gives information about a primary source.
The British English distinction between primary and secondary legislation is not used in American English, due to the American dislike of the British constitutional concept of the fusion of powers as inherently incompatible with due process and the rule of law (one of the great divergences between American and British political philosophy which ...
In contrast to English common law, which consists of enormous tomes of case law, codes in small books are easy to export and easy for judges to apply. However, today there are signs that civil and common law are converging. [64] EU law is codified in treaties, but develops through de facto precedent laid down by the European Court of Justice. [65]
The mischief rule [1] is one of three rules of statutory interpretation traditionally applied by English courts, [2] the other two being the "plain meaning rule" (also known as the "literal rule") and the "golden rule". It is used to determine the exact scope of the "mischief" that the statute in question has set out to remedy, and to guide the ...