Understanding Legal Sources

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In this lesson, you will learn the meaning of primary sources, secondary sources, and how the court views each of them.

There are two types of legal sources: primary and secondary.
Cases, statutes, rules, and codes are primary sources.
Primary sources provide authority for arguments and tell the judge what the law is.
Appellate cases interpret and apply statutes and legal principles to particular situations.
Dictionaries, encyclopedias, reports, law reviews, and guides are secondary sources. If you know nothing about the issues in your case, secondary sources can help you understand them better.
Secondary sources are neither authoritative nor binding.

Transcript

There are two types of legal sources: primary, and secondary.

Cases, statutes, rules and codes are primary sources.

Dictionaries, encyclopedias, reports, law reviews, and guides are secondary sources.

Statutes, rules, and codes provide authority for your arguments. Without them, you have no support for a claim or defense. They tell the judge what the law is. Appellate cases in a relevant jurisdiction represent the law in context. Like statutes, they provide authority for arguments and suggest solutions to conflict in the law. They also interpret and apply relevant statutes, regulations, and legal principles to particular situations.

If you know nothing about the statute or issues in your case, sources like encyclopedias, dictionaries, guides, and even government reports can help. Use them to find background information on issues and topics or as supplemental information in an exhibit or footnote.

Secondary sources are good for understanding how to do something like cite cases or define a legal term. Secondary sources are neither authoritative nor binding. That means the judge doesn\’t have to follow them. Secondary sources are also not mandatory.