Extended Controllers vs. Hooks

[eluser]xtremer360[/eluser]
I am putting together my CMS written in Codeigniter and was told for things like checking if a user is logged in and what not things like that could go in a parent controller for an Admin_Controller but I'm also being told from a good coding friend of mine that he thinks its better to use hooks for this.

I wanted to get some opinions on what is really more practical and should be used?