Primary Authority
o Mandatory Primary Authority- law created by the jurisdiction in which the law
operates
o Persuasive Mandatory Authority-law created by other jurisdictions but which
have persuasive value to our courts
Secondary Authority
o Commentaries or books, treatise, writings, journal articles that explain,
discuss or comment on primary authorities, opinions of Department of
Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission or circulars of the Bangko
Sentral ng Pilipinas.
Classification by Source
Primary (Official) Sources- those published by the issuing agency itself or the official
repository such as the Official Gazette.
Republic Acts and other legislative enactments or statutes, the primary sources are the
Official Gazette published by National Printing Office.
The primary sources for Supreme Court decisions are the Philippine Reports, the
individually mimeographed Advance Supreme Court decisions and the Official Gazette is
selective. The complete court reports for Supreme Court decisions is the Philippine Reports
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Secondary sources of statutes are the Vital Legal Documents, published by the Central
Book Supply, contains a compilation of Presidential Decrees (1973). The second edition
contains Republic Acts.
Prof. Sulpicio Guevara published three books which contains the full text of legislative
enactments or laws namely:
a. Public Laws Annotated (7 Vols), compilation of laws from 1901-1935
b. Commonwealth Acts Annotated (3 Vols), compilation of laws from 1935-1945
c. Laws of the First Philippine Republic (The Laws of Malolos) 1898-1899
General Rule: in the absence of Primary Source the Secondary Source may be cited
SCRA (secondary source) is more popular in the legal community than Philippine
Reports (primary source). There was no primary source for complete compilation of Supreme
Court decisions for more than 20 years. The publication of the Philippine Reports by the
National Printing Office ceased in 1960s. It was only in 1982 when the publication was
revived.
Reasons whay information technology, electronic or digitized sources are popular:
Updated legal information is readily available
Search engines used facilitate research
No complete and updated manually published search tools for statute and case law
In case of conflict between the printed and the electronic sources, the printed version
coming from the issuing government agency prevails. This policy prevails even for the
Supreme Court E-Library where it is explicitly provided in its website.
In finding the law, our ultimate goal is to locate the mandatory primary authorities
which have the bearing on the legal problem at hand. If this authorities are scarce or
nonexistent, our next alternative is to find any relevant persuasive mandatory authority. If
search is still negative might be secondary authorities. There are however instances where
the secondary authorities, more particularly the commentaries made by experts of the field,
take precedence over the persuasive mandatory authorities. With the availability of both,
using both sources is highly recommended.
CLASIFICATION BY CHARACTER
This refer to the nature of the subject treated in books.
This classification categorizes books as:
a. Statute Law Books
b. Case Law Books or Law reports
c. Combination of a and b
d. Law Finders
Law Finders refer to indexes, citators, encyclopedias, legal dictionaries, thesauri or digests.
CARDINAL RULE: ALWAYS START FROM THE LATEST.
EXEPTION: WHEN THE RESEARCH HAS PROVIDED A SPECIFIC PERIOD.
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