HB1158

This bill establishes that legal treatises, scholarly articles, textbooks, and similar secondary sources cannot be treated as authoritative statements of South Dakota law if they conflict with the state constitution, state statutes, court precedents, or common law. Courts and other decision-makers must rely instead on these primary legal sources—the actual constitutional text, laws passed by the legislature, and prior court rulings—rather than what legal experts write about the law. This prevents secondary sources from being used to create, eliminate, or expand legal rights and remedies that aren't already established in those primary sources.