REPORTS. A printed or written cellec.' tion of accounts or relations of cases judi, cially argued and determined.
2. In the jurisprudence of nearly every civilized country, the force of adjudicated precedent& is to greater or less degree acknowledged. But in no own tries are they so deferentially listened to and, indeed, eo implicitly obeyed ae in England and in theee countriee which, like our own, derive their systema of judicial government from her. The European• systems are oompoeed, much more than either oars or the English, of Codes ; and their courte rely far more than ours upon the opinions of eminent teat writers. With us we pay no implicit respect to any. thing hut a " came in point ;" and, supposing the ease to be hy an authoritative court, when that is cited it ie generally taken as conclusive on the question' in issue. Hence both the English and American jurisprudence ie filled with books of Reports ; that is to say. with accounts of cases which have arisen, and of the mode in which they have been argued and decided. These hooks, which until the last half-century were not numerous, have now become, ae will be seen in the list appended, or are becom ing, almost infinite in number,—so much so that the profession has taken refuge in the eyetem of Leading Caeee ; which, in the forms of Smith's Leading Cases, The American Leading Cases, and White & Tudor's Leading Cases in Equity, with one or two others, have now obtained a place in most good libraries.
, 3. Of these late years, in the United States at least, it is usnal for the courts to write out their opinions and to deliver them to the reporter : so that usually' the opinion of the court is correctly given. At the same time, the volumee of different reporters, even of quite modern times, are very different in ohs racter,—the accounts of what the eases were being often so badly presented as to render the opinion of the courts, even when the opinions themeelvee are good, comparatively worthless. In addition to this, an immense proportion of the amports—espe cially of the American—are by courts of no great eminence or ability, while in England, with their syetem of rival reportors, we have at times been borne down with such a multitude of "Reports" that the cases are fairly buried in their own masaes.
4. We are speaking here of thc business of report ingeas practised say sine° the year 1800. Prior to this date there were only one or two American Re ports. In England, however. there were even then very many, and among the English Reports prier to the date of whioh we speak are many of the highest authority, and whioh are oonetantly cited at this day both in England and America. There are, however, many also of very bad authorityt and, indeed, of no authority at all; and against these the lawyer must be upon his guard. They are all called "Reports" alike, and in many cases have the name of some eminent person attached to them, when, in fact, they are mere forgeries so far as that person is cunceroed. Nothing can be 80 carious, as respects their rade of merit, as tha English Reports prior to about theyear 1776 ; and the lawyer should never rely on any one of them without knowing the character of the volume which he cites. They are uftcn toere note-books of lawyers or of students, or ccpies hastily and very inaccurately made from genuine manuscripts. In some instances one part of a book is yood, when another is perfectly worth less. This is specially true of the early Chancery Reports, which were generally printed as book sellers' "jobs." 5. Great judicial mistakes have arisen, even with the most able court,, from want of attention to the different characters of the old reporters. One illus tration of this—not more striking, perhaps, than others—occurred lately in the supreme court of our own country. "It is well known," saym Mr. J. W. Widlace, in his work entitled " The Reporters," "that, in a leading ease, Chief-Justice Marshall, some years since, gave an opinion which had the effect of almost totally subverting, io two states of our Uniun, the entire law of charitable uses. And
though some other states did not adopt the conclu sions of the chief-justice, his venerated name was seized ha all quarters of the country to originate litigation and uncertainty, and deeply to wound the whole body of trusts for religious, charitable, and literary purposes. Fur a quarter of' a century the influences of his opinion were yet active in evil, —when, in 1844, an endeavor to subvert a large foundation bruught the subject again before the court, in the Girard College ease, and caused a more careful examination ioto it. The opinion of Chief Justice Marshall was in review, and was overruled. Mr. Binney showed at the bar that as to the prin cipal authority cited by the chief-justice, from one of the old hooks, there were no less than four different reports of it, all variaot from each other ; that, as tu one of the reporters, the ease had been decided thirty years before the time of his report; that he was not likely to know Boy thing personally about it; that he certainly knew nothing about it accurately ;' that another reporter gave two ver sions of the ease entirely different,' not only from that of his co-reporter, but likewise from another of his own ; that a fourth account, by a yet distinct reportpr, was ' different from all the rest ;' that 'nothing is to be obtained from any of these re ports, except perhaps the last, that is worthy of any reliaoce as a true history of the ease ;' and that even this, the best of them, had been rejected in modern times, as being cootrary to all principle.' After such evidence that these judicial historians, like others of the title, were full of nothing so much as of 'most excellent differences.' the counsel might very well observe that it is essentially necessary to guard against the indiscriminate reception of the old reporters, especially the Chancery Reporters, as authority ;' and certainly a knowledge less than that which Chief-Justice Marshall possessed io some other branches of the law would have reminded him that most of his authorities enjoyed a reputa tion hut dubiously good, while the character of one of them was notoriously bad." 6. Ammag the English Reporters the following possess little authority: Noy, Godholt, Owen, Pop ham, Winch, March, Hutton, Ley, Lane, Hetley, Carter, J. Bridgman, Kahle, Siderfin, Latch, several volumes of the " Modern" Reports, 3d Salkeld, Gilbert's Cases in Law and Equity, the 1st and 2d pests of "Reports in Chancery," Chancery Cases, 'Reports temp. Finch , " Gilbert's Reports," 8th Tauoton, Peake's Nisi Prins Reports. But even in books of the worst authority there are occasion ally eases well reported. The fullest account which llas yet been given of the Reporters—their chrono logical order, their respective merits, the history, public and private, of the volumes, with biographi cal sketches of the authors—is presented in au American work, " The Reporters Chronologically Arranged ; with Occasional Remarks on their Re spective Merits." The author (Mr. Wallace) spent a considerable time at Lincoln's Inn, and at the Temple, London, from the libraries of which he oullected much history hitherto not generally known. In the ease of Farrell vs. Hilditch, 94 English Common Law, p. 885, the work received from the judges of the court of common pleas, sitting in bane at Westminster, the characterization of " highly valuable and interesting," and one to which " they could not refrain from referring" OD a question involving the reputation of one of the early English reporters.
7. The following list of reports and reporters is from the pen of the Hon. Theodore W. Dwight, LL.D., Professor of Law in Columbia College, New York. It is, without doubt, the most learned, full, and exact list which has ever been prepared either in England or the United States,—the result of im mense labor and of most accurate knowledge and research. As such it deserves the highest praise, and, we are sure, will he properly valued by all American lawyers.