Evaluating Authority Exercise


This is the replacement of the earlier post.

Here is the Authority Rank Summary Details     It is also available in Module 5 in TWEN.

The Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution is the most authoritative.  It is ranked # 1.  All 15 votes.

The next item with the highest number of points was a federal trial case in the Federal Supplement.   To locate the case, citations to the Federal Supplement case and the Florida Law Weekly were provided.  Note, there were also a United States Supreme Court with a link to Quizlaw and a link to Wikipedia.  Neither are authoritative places to locate the decision so both would have much lower rankings.  Can you count on QuizLaw and Wikipedi having the correct decision on their websites?  You can count on accessing the case in the Federal Supplement by using the citation.

American Jurisprudence 2d and the treatise written by Rotunda and Nowak were tied for third place.  American Jurisprudence 2d does not make sense. It is not an authoritative source, but it is a great research tool use to get an overview of an area of law.  Florida Jurisprudence 2d which is also an encyclopedia was also ranked fairly high.  Again, a great research tool, but not an authoritative source,  However, the treatise written by Nowak and Rotunda is an authoritative source.  And, the Bittker and Denning is also an authoritative source.

Law review can also be authoritative sources.  To make you decision you need to read the article, learn about the author, and consider the publisher. The article is the most critical piece.

One of the items was an article in the NYT by Linda Greenhouse.  She was the United States Supreme Court reporter for years.   She was very respected.  But her article in the NYT is probably not very authoritative in this context.  Although, her books clearly would be.

The last item is Constitutional Law in the Turning Point Series.  Not a very authoritative source.

Please let me know your comments and questions.