What is authority?

Authority is anything a court can, or must, use in reaching its decision.

Examples of authority include cases, statutes, other forms of law, articles, definitions, etc. Basically, anything that can be quoted can be one kind of authority or another. But in order to be relied upon, the authority must be relevant.

relevant: Being of similar topic, or addressing similar points of law.

Authority is a very important concept. If one party can present a case, statute, definition, article, or other information to the court that supports that party's case, the court may be influenced by that information.

There are several different kinds of authority. In this limited exercise, we will concentrate on two kinds of authority: Primary and Secondary.