Judicial precedent Judicial precedent at times is called legal citation is not confined to case law statutes, ordinances, regulations and administrative rulings also include in this wide canopy. Disclosure of the latter may be of greater practical importance, especially if it would be more difficult for the tribunal to discover on its own. What constitutes a controlling jurisdiction can be a complicated question. On questions of federal law, U.S. Supreme Court precedent is obviously controlling, as are cases from the federal circuit in which you are litigating. As for state law, regardless of the court, you are in, you are obliged to cite directly adverse authority from the jurisdiction whose law the court is applying. In addition, if you are urging the court to adopt or rely upon the law from other jurisdictions, the duty of candor requires disclosure of directly adverse authority from those jurisdictions as well. The disclosure obligation is not limited to adverse appellate decisions—the rule requires disclosure of any adverse authority in the controlling jurisdiction, not just controlling authority (Sealy, 2000). American Bar Association Formal Opinion 280 (June 1949), which is still relevant today, provides a few questions to ask when you find directly adverse authority: Is the decision which opposing counsel has overlooked one which the court should clearly consider in deciding a case? Would a reasonable judge properly feel that a lawyer who advanced as the law a proposition adverse to the undisclosed decision was lacking in candor and fairness to him? Might the judge consider himself misled by an implied representation that the lawyer knew of no adverse authority? Some courts have evenly maintained that a lawyer’s duty of candor to the court must always prevail in any conflict with the duty of zealous advocacy while representing its client. At this standstill, some equilibrium must be wracked between the two ethical obligations. Under the Model Rule 3.3 cmt. 3, ‘a lawyer is not required to make a disinterested exposition of the law, but must recognize the existence of pertinent legal authority’. Counsel for an appellee; for instance, does not require disclosing the fact that he could find no case law to argue confirmation of a fact adjudged by the lower court. The rules do not endorse; a requirement that the lawyer, in addition to advocating the cause of his client, steps first into the shoes of opposing counsel to find all potentially contrary authority, and finally into the robes of the judge to decide whether the authority is indeed contrary or whether it is distinguishable”. If the candor towards tribunal is taken into consideration, then according to 27 NCAC 02 rule 3.3, (Macdonald and Koffman, 2007) A lawyer shall not knowingly  1. Make a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer;  2. fail to disclose to the tribunal legal authority in the controlling jurisdiction known to the lawyer to be directly adverse to the position of the client and not disclosed by opposing counsel; or  3. offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer, the lawyer’s client, or a witness called by the lawyer, has offered material evidence and the lawyer comes to know of