official authority v. unofficial authority
If a publication is published by the government, state
or federal, it is official. If a publication is published by a
private publisher, it is unofficial. The reasons to be able to
tell the difference is:
- In case citations, the official publication is always cited first
- Two major private (unofficial) publishers have created the
two most powerful research systems. West’s Key Number System and the
Total Client Service Library by Lawyer’s Cooperative Publishing. Official
publications do not use either of these research systems.