---
title: "Source criticism"
chunk: 4/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_criticism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:46:03.309305+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The most important legal sources are created by parliaments, governments, courts, and legal researchers. They may be written or informal and based on established practices. Views concerning the quality of sources differ among legal philosophies: Legal positivism is the view that the text of the law should be considered in isolation, while legal realism, interpretivism (legal), critical legal studies and feminist legal criticism interprets the law on a broader cultural basis.

== See also ==

== Notes ==

== References ==
American Library Association (1994) Evaluating Information: A Basic Checklist. Brochure. American Library Association
Anderson, Richard C. (1978). Schema-directed processes in language comprehension. IN: NATO International Conference on Cognitive Psychology and Instruction, 1977, Amsterdam: Cognitive Psychology and Instruction. Ed. by A. M. Lesgold, J. W. Pellegrino, S. D. Fokkema & R. Glaser. New York: Plenum Press (pp. 67–82).
Anderson, Richard C. & Pichert, J. W. (1977). Recall of previously unrecallable information following a shift of perspective. Urbana, Il: University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading, April. 1977. (Technical Report 41). Available in full-text from: http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/31/83/58.pdf
Bazerman, Charles (1995). The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines. 5th ed. Houghton Mifflin.
Bee, Ronald E. (1983). Statistics and Source Criticism. Vetus Testamentum, Volume 33, Number 4, 483–488.
Beecher-Monas, Erica (2007). Evaluating scientific evidence : an interdisciplinary framework for intellectual due process. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bernheim, Ernst (1889). Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie [Guidebook for Historical Method and the Philosophy of History].  Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.
Brundage, Anthony (2007).  Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing, 4th Ed. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc. (3rd edition, 1989 cited in text above).
Chesney, T. (2006). An empirical examination of Wikipedia's credibility. First Monday, 11(11), URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_11/chesney/index.html
Encyclopædia Britannica (2006). Fatally Flawed. Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature. http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf    Nature's response March 23, 2006: http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf
Engeldinger, Eugene A. (1988) Bibliographic Instruction and Critical Thinking: The Contribution of the Annotated Bibliography. Research Quarterly, Vol. 28, Winter, p. 195–202
Engeldinger, Eugene A. (1998) Technology Infrastructure and Information Literacy. Library Philosophy and Practice Vol. 1, No. 1
Fritch, J. W., & Cromwell, R. L. (2001). Evaluating Internet resources: Identity, affiliation, and cognitive authority in a networked world. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52, 499–507.
Gerhart, Susan L. (2004). Do Web search engines suppress controversy?. First Monday 9(1).
Giles, Jim (1 December 2005). "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head". Nature. 438 (7070): 900–901. Bibcode:2005Natur.438..900G. doi:10.1038/438900a. PMID 16355180.
Gudmundsson, David (2007).  När kritiska elever är målet. Att undervisa i källkritik på gymnasiet. [When the Goal is Critical Students. Teaching Source Criticism in Upper Secondary School]. Malmö, Sweden: Malmö högskola. Full text (in Swedish)
Hardtwig, W. (2001). Ranke, Leopold von (1795–1886). IN: Smelser, N. J. & Baltes, P. B. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier. (12738–12741).
Harris, Ben (1979). Whatever Happened to Little Albert? American Psychologist, 34, 2, pp. 151–160. link to full text
Harris, Ben (1980). Ceremonial versus critical history of psychology. American Psychologist, 35(2), 218–219. (Note).
Healy, Jack (2008). Was the Dear Leader Photoshopped In? November 7, 2008,  2:57 pm [President Kim Jong Il, North Korea]. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/was-the-dear-leader-photoshopped-in/?scp=7&sq=Kim%20Jong-il&st=cse
Hjørland, Birger (2008). Source criticism. In: Epistemological Lifeboat. Ed. by Birger Hjørland & Jeppe Nicolaisen.
Howell, Martha & Prevenier, Walter (2001). From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8560-6.
Katzer, Jeffrey; Cook, Kenneth H. & Crouch, Wayne W. (1998). Evaluating Information: A Guide for Users of Social Science Research. 4th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
King, David (1997) The Commissar Vanishes: the falsification of photographs and art in Stalin's Russia. Metropolitan Books, New York.
Langlois, Charles-Victor & Seignobos, Charles (1898). Introduction aux études historiques [Introduction to the Study of History]. Paris: Librairie Hachette.  Full text (in French). Introduction to the Study of History  Full text (in English)
Leth, Göran & Thurén, Torsten (2000). Källkritik för internet . Stockholm: Styrelsen för Psykologiskt Försvar. (Retrieved 2007-11-30).
Loftus, Elizabeth F. (1996). Eyewitness Testimony. Revised edition Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press. (Original edition:1979).
Lorenz, C. (2001). History: Theories and Methods. IN: Smelser, N. J. & Baltes, P. B. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier. (Pp. 6869–6876).
Mathewson, Daniel B. (2002). A critical binarism: Source criticism and deconstructive criticism. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament   no98, pp. 3–28. Abstract:  When classifying the array of interpretive methods currently available, biblical critics regularly distinguish between historical-critical methods, on the one hand, and literary critical methods, on the other. Frequently, methods on one side of the divide are said to be antagonistic to certain methods on the other. This article examines two such presumed antagonistic methods, source criticism and deconstructive criticism, and argues that they are not, in fact, antagonistic, but similar: both are postmodern movements, and both share an interpretive methodology (insofar as it is correct to speak of a deconstructive methodology). This argument is illustrated with a source-critical and a deconstructive reading of Exodus 14.
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Mintz, Anne P. (ed.). (2002). Web of deception. Misinformation on the Internet. Medford, NJ: Information Today.
Müller, Philipp (2009). Understanding history: Hermeneutics and source-criticism in historical scholarship. IN: Dobson, Miriam & Ziemann, Benjamin (eds): Reading primary sources. The interpretation of texts from nineteenth and twentieth-century history. London: Routledge (pp. 21–36).
Olden-Jørgensen, Sebastian (2001). Til Kilderne: Introduktion til Historisk Kildekritik (in Danish). [To the sources: Introduction to historical source criticism]. København: Gads Forlag. ISBN 978-87-12-03778-1.
Reinfandt, Christohp (2009). Reading texts after the linguistic turn: approaches from literary studies and their implementation. IN: Dobson, Miriam & Ziemann, Benjamin (eds): Reading primary sources. The interpretation of texts from nineteenth and twentieth-century history. London: Routledge (pp. 37–54).
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Wilson, Patrick (1983). Second-Hand Knowledge. An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.