Also known as: primary authorities · primary source
Written by attorneys — see sources 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.
Wayne County initiated condemnation actions in late April 2001 against nineteen parcels of land south of Metropolitan Airport owned by the defendants. The dispute originated from the county's two billion dollar renovation of the airport, which included a new terminal and jet runway. To address noise concerns from increased air traffic, the county used a twenty one million dollar partial grant from the Federal Aviation Administration to purchase approximately five hundred acres of neighboring properties through voluntary sales in a checkerboard pattern. Wayne County's agreement with the FAA required that properties acquired under the noise abatement program be put to economically productive use. The county therefore developed the Pinnacle Project, a one thousand three hundred acre business and technology park adjacent to the airport that would include a conference center, hotel accommodations, and a recreational facility. After acquiring an additional five hundred acres through further voluntary sales, the county determined that forty six more parcels were needed and adopted a Resolution of Necessity and Declaration of Taking on July 12, 2000, to acquire the remaining three hundred acres. The county filed the condemnation actions under the Uniform Condemnation Procedures Act after some additional voluntary sales reduced the number of parcels still needed to nineteen. Each property owner responded by filing a motion to review the necessity of the proposed condemnations. An evidentiary hearing on the consolidated cases was held over four weeks in the Wayne Circuit Court. On December 19, 2001, the trial court affirmed the county's determination of necessity. The trial court denied defendants' motions for reconsideration on January 24, 2002. Defendants appealed to the Court of Appeals, which granted leave on April 24, 2003, and affirmed the trial court's decision. The Michigan Supreme Court granted defendants' applications for leave to appeal on November 17, 2003. Our grant order directed the parties to the following issues.
View casePrism 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.
The Beef Promotion and Research Act of 1985 directed the Secretary of Agriculture to issue a beef promotion order that established a Cattlemen's Beef Promotion and Research Board with members appointed by the Secretary from nominations by the cattle industry. The Act also required the creation of an Operating Committee with ten Board members and ten representatives from a federation of state beef councils. It authorized a one-dollar-per-head assessment on cattle sales and imports to fund promotion, research, and consumer information projects. Pursuant to the Act, the Secretary issued the Beef Promotion and Research Order in 1986. Under the Order the assessment is collected mainly by state beef councils that forward the proceeds to the Board for use in developing promotional campaigns subject to the Secretary's approval. In 1988 beef producers voted in a referendum to make the order permanent. After that vote the program collected more than one billion dollars. In fiscal year 2000 alone the Board collected over forty-eight million dollars in assessments and spent more than twenty-nine million dollars on domestic promotion featuring the slogan Beef. It's What's for Dinner. Many of the promotional messages bore the attribution Funded by America's Beef Producers along with a Beef Board logo. The Secretary appoints and can remove Board members. He approves all budgets and advertising content. He holds authority to terminate the entire program if it is not in the public interest. Respondents include two associations whose members pay the assessments and several individual cattle producers who raise and sell cattle subject to the checkoff. They initiated litigation in Federal District Court against the Secretary, the Department of Agriculture, and the Board. They later amended their complaint to assert a First Amendment challenge to the compelled funding of promotional activities after the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. United Foods, Inc. The District Court held a bench trial and ruled in favor of respondents on the First Amendment claim. It entered a permanent injunction against further collection of the mandatory checkoff. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the District Court's judgment on the First Amendment issue. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the case.
View casePrimary 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.
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. 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…