Adverse Authority

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Adverse authority or adverse controlling authority, in United States law, simply means any case which has some controlling authority as to a matter that is currently before a particular court, and which goes against the position for which an attorney is arguing before that court. In most U.S. courts, an attorney is under an ethical obligation imposed by the local canons of professional responsibility to disclose binding adverse authority that he or she discovers while researching the case. For example, this obligation is set forth in the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct, §3.3.