REPORTING, COUNCIL OF LAW. The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales has charge of reporting and publishing the cases in those two coun tries.
REPORTi. A printed or written collec tion of accounts or relations of cases judicial ly argued and determined.
The value and force of adjudicated prece dents, Which is, to a greater or less degree, acknowledged in the jurisprudence of all civi lized countries, is elsewhere discussed under the titles herein, judge-made law, precedent, and stare decisis. The greater weight given to precedent, however, in England and Amer ica, makes the subject of law reporting one of the utmost interest and importance. The multiplication of reports has given rise to much discussion on the subject.
In a report to the American Bar Association, 1898, by Edward Q. Keasbey, it was suggest ed that the evils of excessive reports would be lessened if the court could be induced to write shorter opinions, especially when pass ing upon well-settled principles of law, and if the dissenting opinions were brief. The committee thought that dissenting opinions should be published. Only the important cas es should be reported, omitting those which decide only questions of fact, or reaffirm set tled principles of law, the selection to be made by the reporter. In preparing the syl labus all dicta should be omitted, and also propositions of law made by the court argu endo. The reporter should state the facts even though they are stated by the court ; an abstract of the arguments should be print ed only in novel and important cases.
It was said in 1907 that there were about 14,500 volumes of reports ; see Bulletin of Amer. Libr. Assoc. p. 94; and that, up to 1906, 725,000 cases had been reported and that 23,000 were being reported each year. See Index to Leg. Periodicals, April, 1909.
Prior to 1800, there were only one or two American Reports. In England there were many, but before the period of official report Ing, and particularly among the early reports, there is a great difference in the value of the reports published by volunteer reporters.
While some of them are of the highest au thority, both in England and America, others are of little or, in many cases, of no author ity whatever, and it is of the highest im portance that a lawyer in citing them should knbw the character of the volume cited.
They are often mere note-books of law yers or of students, or copies hastily and very inaccurately made from genuine manu scripts. In some instances one part of the book is good, when another is perfectly worthless. This is especially true of the early Chancery Reports, which were general ly printed as booksellers' "jobs." The failure to give due attention to the character of the old reports has led to grave judicial errors. Mr. John William Wallace, in "The Reporters," calls attention to the fact that the opinion of Chief Justice Mar shall, which "had the effect of almost totally subverting in two states of our Union the entire law of charitable uses," relied upon an authority, which, twenty-five years after wards, under the critical examination of Mr. Binney, was shown to be no authority, and the opinion passed upon it was overruled. The necessity of attention to the apparent value of the old reports is enhanced by the fact that even in books of the worst author ity, there are occasional cases well reported, and different parts of the same book are of very different value. The most thorough and satisfactory source of information on this subject is "The Reporters," the author of which made the most exhaustive investiga tions in London, and his work received the highest commendation from English judges; 5 C. B. N. S. 854, where the book was char acterized "as highly valuable and interest ing," and one to which "they could not re frain from referring" on a question involv ing the reputation of one of the early English reporters. See, also, Sir F. Pollock in 1903 Am. Bar. Assoc. Report as to the value of Mr. Wallace's work.