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.