Controlling authority
Binding precedent from the forum's own court hierarchy that remains good law for the specific proposition cited and was decided under the standard the motion invokes.
First used in The Case You Never Pulled
The Institute's definition has more conditions than everyday usage, and each is a separate check.
Hierarchy: is the decision binding on this court, or only persuasive? Treatment, proposition by proposition: a case can be overruled on one point and remain good law on another, so a flag on the whole case can get both halves wrong. Posture: for a summary judgment motion, the most useful holdings were decided at summary judgment or on appeal from it. Forum standard: the federal and California summary judgment burdens differ, so authority on one does not control the other.
Software finds controlling authority reliably only by filtering on each of these conditions, not on topic alone. A controlling case that was never retrieved is omission class O1, and no citation checker can see it.
Related terms
Related frameworks
Pre-Filing Completeness Protocol
Research is complete enough to file when every element of every claim at issue has its governing standard, controlling authority, record support, adverse-authority check and rejected-argument check recorded, and every one of those cells ends in a citation or a logged search that found nothing.
The Proposition-Usability Model
A cited proposition is usable only when it is still valid, governs in the forum and procedural posture, helps the represented party, and has not already been rejected in the jurisdiction.