Primary Legal Source Retrieval Task

A Primary Legal Source Retrieval Task is a legal research task that retrieves binding legal authority including statutes, regulations, and court decisions from official legal repositorys.

• AKA: Binding Authority Retrieval Task, Primary Authority Search Task, Official Legal Source Retrieval Task.
• Context:
  • It can typically distinguish Primary Legal Sources from secondary legal commentary.
  • It can typically access Official Government Repositorys for authoritative texts.
  • It can typically provide Direct Citation Links to source documents.
  • It can typically generate Official URL Citations from government websites.
  • It can often verify Source Currency through last-updated timestamps.
  • It can often track Amendment History for statutory changes.
  • It can often exclude Secondary Source Material when primary-only constraints apply.
  • It can range from being a Statutory Source Retrieval Task to being a Case Law Source Retrieval Task, depending on its source type.
  • It can range from being a Current Law Retrieval Task to being a Historical Law Retrieval Task, depending on its temporal focus.
  • It can range from being a Comprehensive Source Retrieval Task to being a Targeted Source Retrieval Task, depending on its retrieval scope.
  • It can range from being a Structured Source Retrieval Task to being an Unstructured Source Retrieval Task, depending on its query method.
  • ...
• Examples:
  • Legislative Source Retrieval Tasks, such as:
    • Federal Statute Retrieval Task for United States Code.
    • State Statute Retrieval Task for state legislative enactments.
    • Municipal Ordinance Retrieval Task for local laws.
  • Regulatory Source Retrieval Tasks, such as:
    • Federal Register Retrieval Task for proposed rules.
    • Code of Federal Regulations Retrieval Task for final rules.
    • State Regulatory Code Retrieval Task for state regulations.
  • Judicial Source Retrieval Tasks, such as:
    • Supreme Court Opinion Retrieval Task for highest court decisions.
    • Appellate Court Decision Retrieval Task for intermediate court rulings.
  • ...
• Counter-Examples:
  • Secondary Source Research Task, which retrieves legal commentary rather than binding authority.
  • Legal Blog Search Task, which accesses informal sources rather than official sources.
  • Legal News Retrieval Task, which focuses on current events rather than legal authority.
• See: Legal Authority Hierarchy Framework, Legal Source Verification Task, Legal Query Template System, Legal Information Retrieval Task, Jurisdiction-Scoped Legal Search Task, Legal Citation Validation System, Legal Research Task, Legal Document Corpus.

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