Law Reports

Law Reports

Published volumes of the decisions of courts.

Usually, opinions in cases are promptly published in unbound Advance Sheets just after they are handed down. They are subsequently collected into bound reporters when there are enough to fill a volume. Volumes are numbered in chronological order, and cases are found by referring to volume and page numbers in the citation for each case. Many law reports are also offered in CD-ROM format, or provided as part of such online services as Westlaw and Lexis.

Law Reports

the publications in which the decisions of the courts are recorded. It should, however, be appreciated that in the UK and in many other jurisdictions these are private publications rather than state-operated. The publisher makes the reports more attractive, more useful, and subject to legal protection, by adding a summary of the facts and law involved, called a rubric Indexing makes it easier to find relevant precedents for argument in court. Some series are given special weight because they are revised by the judges themselves, examples being the Law Reports in England and the Session Cases in Scotland. There is little doubt that the comprehensive reporting of judgments and the indexing of them supported the doctrine of STARE DECISIS, or binding force of PRECEDENT.