Despite her more popular image as a meek and retiring housewife, Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, emerges in recent scholarship as a figure of authority – a woman capable of elucidating the tenets of Islam, delivering a fatwa, and acting as a source of sunna. This paper continues the trend of what one scholar calls a “resignification of Fatimah’s role in the Shi‘i narrative” by examining how classical Shi‘i hadith compilers made use of Fatima’s khutba, a sermon she is reported to have delivered not long after her father’s death. After the Caliph Abu Bakr denied Fatima property she believed she had inherited from the Prophet, Shi‘i sources say, she aired her grievances at her father’s mosque, warning her listeners against those who wished to usurp the caliphate and her rights. She also discussed the major edicts of Islam and exhorted Muslims to follow the correct path. In their treatises on legal matters, prominent Shi‘i hadith compilers Ibn Babawayh (d. 1191) and al-Majlisi (d. 1699) treated Fatima’s khutba as a source of law and Fatima herself as a model for behavior, thus recognizing for the daughter of the Prophet a status similar to that of the imams. This paper explores the origins of this stance and its significance as a means of shedding light on how classical Shi‘i sources construct authority. Given that Fatima’s status is inextricably linked to her relationship to her father, for example, I argue that these hadith compilers acknowledge and uphold the concept of bilateral descent – the notion that a daughter may carry on her father’s legacy, transmit his bloodline, and inherit his property – to a greater degree than do their Sunni counterparts. Here, just like a son, a daughter can inherit both a father’s property and his authority. Further, I maintain that such a stance exerted a positive impact on the status of women in Shi‘i societies versus Sunni ones, at least on a theoretical basis.