POL 3322: American Constitutional Law

• A primary source is a record of a person, event, or occurrence created by an eyewitness or a participant's version of an event. Primary sources allow researchers to gain better insight into historical figures and events.
   
• Primary sources emphasize the lack of intermediaries between the things or events being studied and reports of those things or events based on the belief that firsthand accounts are more accurate.
   
• Examples of primary sources include diaries, letters, notes from lab experiments, research data, photographs, blogs, e-mails, maps, scrapbooks, Facebook pages, poetry, artwork, birthday cards, office records, and artifacts.

Primary sources in legal research constitute the actual law itself. In contrast, secondary sources offer commentary, background information, and guidance on the law, often directing researchers to relevant primary sources, though they do not themselves constitute law.

The table below provides examples of each category.