Group 3 (Legal Research)

Members: Juan Emmanuel Tan

Ibli Inductivo
Annalile n. Manaog
Arianne Joy Fabregas
Ma. Fatima S. Runa

THE SECONDARY AUTHORITIES OF LEGAL KNOWLEDGE

Secondary sources are works which are not primary authority but which digest, discuss or analyze legal
provisions, judicial decisions or define and explain legal doctrines and terms. These can help analyze a problem and
provide research reference to both primary sources and other secondary materials.

As persuasive authority, is not a law itself and can never be a mandatory although some of these
sources quote from the law itself. Books and journals are not written by a legislative body or a court and can only be
persuasive. Secondary authorities are also sources of information that describe or interpret the law, such as legal
treatises, law review articles, and other scholarly legal writings, cited by lawyers to persuade a court to reach a particular
decision in a case, but which the court is not obligated to follow.

A. LEGAL COMMENTARIES AND TEXTBOOKS

1. LEGAL COMMENTARIES – (also known as ‘loose-leaf services’ or sometimes ‘reporters’) can look similar to
legal encyclopedias but are focused on one particular subject area of law. They usually provide a summary of the
law, leading cases and the primary legislation.

2. LEGAL TEXTBOOKS - are expositions by legal writers on statutory law and case law pertaining to a particular
subject and published in book form. These are usually able to treat a subject in greater depth than a legal
encyclopedia, but not to the extent found in a periodical article.

B. LEGAL PERIODICALS, ENCYCLOPEDIA, AND DICTIONARIES

1. LEGAL PERIODICALS- while the use of legal periodicals in legal research is indispensable in the US, it is not
widely used in the Philippines. The most serious and highly reputed legal periodicals are the academic law
reviews produced at the major American law schools. Law reviews are published by virtually all accredited
law schools as training grounds for students. They contain both articles by established scholars and student-
written comments and case notes. Both lead articles and comments are marked by extensive footnotes,
making them useful research tools.

2. LEGAL ENCYCLOPEDIA - It is a comprehensive treatise of the entire field of the law, which is divided into
topics arranged in alphabetical order. It presents in concise form, brief but comprehensive statements of
the current law upon said topics. The text statements, like a digest, are those of abstract legal principles
logically and succinctly arranged and classified according to legal subject matters, and supported by
footnote reference to the decisions which are relied upon to support these principles.

LEGAL ENCYCLOPEDIA VS. OTHER SECONDARY AUTHORITIES

LEGAL ENCYCLOPEDIA SECONDARY AUTHORITIES

subject-book which presents to the LAW DICTIONARIES
user the means of making his own PROVIDES A SHORT DEFINITION OF
definitions WORD OR PHRASE
deals with a whole filed law TREATISES
treats a portion of the subject
gives literary statement of the law DIGESTS
presents isolated summaries of points
of law

3. LEGAL DICTIONARIES - Law dictionaries are useful for identifying the definition of words in their legal sense
or use. For each word or phrase, a short definition is given. Some also provide a citation to a court case or
other reference having the source of the word or phrase..

Reference: Rodriguez, Rufus, B., Legal Research (2002)