Also known as: primary authorities · primary source
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A binding source of law such as a constitution, statute, regulation, or judicial decision that a court must follow when resolving a dispute. Primary authority derives its force from official governmental enactment or adjudication rather than from scholarly commentary or persuasive analysis.
Patricia Patel's will left her stamping machine to her brother and a sum from a named account to her niece. After her death the executor asked the probate court to classify the gifts under the applicable state probate statute. The court applied the statute as primary authority and classified the machine as a specific devise and the monetary gift as demonstrative.
Pinnacle Holdings sued Wayne County after the county condemned its land for a private development project. The Michigan Supreme Court examined the state constitution's public-use requirement and applied its own prior decisions as primary authority to hold that the taking was invalid.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Prism Analytics challenged a federal beef checkoff program that required producers to fund promotional messages. The Supreme Court looked to the First Amendment and its own precedents as primary authority to decide whether the assessments constituted government speech.
Primary authority consists of constitutions, statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions that bind courts. Secondary authority such as treatises and law review articles may be persuasive but never binds a court.
Supporting sources
Statutes, regulations, and prior judicial decisions that establish standards of conduct qualify as primary authority. When those sources exist they supply the governing rule before a jury applies general negligence principles.
Supporting sources
A regulation that prescribes specific conduct for the protection of a defined class supplies the standard of care as primary authority. The court applies the regulation directly rather than treating it as mere evidence of reasonableness.
Supporting sources
…power of eminent domain.[^maj-22] To ascertain the people's understanding of art. 10, § 2, it is to be remembered that: The primary source for ascertaining the meaning of a constitutional provision is to determined its plain meaning as understood by its ratifiers at the time of its adoption. This is so because "the…