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88-669: The problem of finding cases on a particular topic was a large problem for the rapidly growing American legal system of the 19th century. John B. West, the founder of West Publishing, described this problem in his article A multiplicity of reports . To solve the problem, he developed a system with two major parts. First, his company began to regularly publish cases from many American jurisdictions in bound volumes called reporters (the West National Reporter System now covers all state and federal appellate courts, as well as certain trial courts). Second, he put together

176-433: A federated search across multiple content types. Users can either enter descriptive terms or Boolean connectors and select a jurisdiction. Documents are ranked by relevance. WestlawNext also supports retrieving documents by citation, party name or KeyCite reference. An overview page enables users to see the top results per content type, or to view all results for a particular content type. Filters can also be applied to refine

264-589: A "Key Numbering System" with a unique number for every conceivable legal topic. The U.S. federal government does not publish an official reporter for the federal courts at the circuit and district levels. However, just as the UK government uses the ICLR reporters by default, the U.S. courts use the unofficial West federal reporters for cases after 1880, which are the Federal Reporter (for courts of appeals) and

352-600: A "West Key Number System" logo on their spines. (The key depicted is somewhat cartoonish, in that it has too many teeth to be used in a typical pin tumbler lock .) At the encouragement of the American Bar Association , West also licensed the West Key Number System "to nearly every independently published state digest", and invited writers of treatises and textbooks to include West key numbers in their publications. Each case published in

440-514: A West reporter is evaluated by a West "attorney-editor" who identifies and summarizes the points of law cited or explained in the case. The attorney-editor places the summaries of the points of law covered in the case at the beginning of the case. These summaries are usually a paragraph long, and are called headnotes . Each headnote is then assigned a topic and key number. The headnotes are arranged according to their topic and key number in multi-volume sets of books called Digests. A digest serves as

528-623: A case law database, as long as the database is part of the user's regular subscription plan. Other digest systems exist, including Butterworth's Digest for the United Kingdom (also containing references to cases decided in other Commonwealth countries), the Canadian Abridgment, digests associated with official state reports , such as in California and Wisconsin , and digests associated with topical reporters, such as

616-608: A case without looking to the actual book, was found to infringe West's copyrights by the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota . After Lexis' appeals were turned down by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals , the company entered into an agreement to pay West $ 50,000 per year to license West's pagination and text corrections. No other publisher was offered similar terms, and

704-417: A classification system in which he divided the law into major categories which he called topics (such as "Contracts"). He then created hundreds of subcategories. To save space in printing, these were given a number called a key number. He then applied this "topic and key number" system to the cases he published. The key number is identified in the books with a key number and a key symbol graphic. John West

792-654: A computerized legal research system. The Commonwealth Law Reports are the authorised reports of decision of the High Court of Australia . The Federal Court Reports are the authorised reports of decisions of the Federal Court of Australia (including the Full Court). Each state and territory has a series of authorised reports, e.g. the Victorian Reports, of decisions of the superior courts of

880-414: A jurisdiction's primary law . Official case law publishing may be carried out by a government agency, or by a commercial entity. Unofficial law reports, on the other hand, are not officially sanctioned and are published as a commercial enterprise. In Australia and New Zealand (see below), official reports are called authorised reports—unofficial reports are referred to as unauthorised reports. For

968-410: A list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. Verification of citations is necessary, because lawyers must determine whether a case has been reversed, overruled, or modified by a subsequent case before citing it in court. Further, when interpreting a statute it is necessary to examine previous judicial interpretations. The United States judiciary operates under

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1056-475: A necessary part of American legal research that the process of citation checking is still informally referred to as "Shepardizing." In 2004, KeyCite was the most-used citation checking service in an annual survey of law firm technology use conducted by the American Bar Association . WestCheck is software that extracts citations from a word processing document and submits them to KeyCite or to Westlaw for retrieval of full text documents. The software consists of

1144-427: A new series. Researchers can also search the digest electronically using Westlaw : Most secondary sources published by Thomson West, such as Corpus Juris Secundum and American Jurisprudence , also have key number hyperlinks in their online Westlaw versions. The "Key Numbers and Digest" feature and the hyperlinks create a "Custom Digest". The Custom Digest allows: Selecting key numbers and jurisdictions in

1232-592: A selection of case law decided by courts . When a particular judicial opinion is referenced, the law report series in which the opinion is printed will determine the case citation format. Historically, the term reporter was used to refer to the individual persons who actually compile, edit, and publish such opinions. For example, the Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States

1320-592: A specific group of states. The National Reporter System is now the dominant unofficial reporter system in the U.S., and 21 states have discontinued their own official reporters and certified the appropriate West regional reporter as their official reporter. West and its rival, LexisNexis , both publish unofficial reporters of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. West also publishes the West American Digest System to help lawyers find cases in its reporters. West digests and reporters have always featured

1408-433: A standalone program and word processor add-in, either of which may be used, and a web site with the same functionality. West also provides BriefTools, which replaces West CiteLink, and provides citation checking and file retrieval services within a word processing document. Another version only inserts Westlaw links into documents. West CiteAdvisor formats citations and creates a table of authorities. Like WestCheck, it

1496-459: A subject index to the case law published in West reporters. Headnotes are merely editorial guides to the points of law discussed or used in the cases, and the headnotes themselves are not legal authority. West publishes West's Analysis of American Law , which is a complete guide to the topic and key number system, and it is revised periodically. In print, a digest works like an encyclopedia, in that

1584-546: Is Chancery Law Chronicles, which now publishes verdicts of Supreme Court of Bangladesh. After the Supreme Court of Bangladesh was established in 1972, its online law report is Supreme Court Online Bulletin and it initially published a law report, containing the judgments, orders and decisions of the Court. Another widely used law report in the country is the Bangladesh Legal Decisions which is published by

1672-404: Is Westlaw's online courseware that is specifically tailored for law schools . It is used as an online extension of the classroom. Teachers use it to post syllabi, PowerPoint presentations, class materials and announcements. TWEN is also used for emailing, forum posting, live chats, polling, linking to CALI Lessons and posting/submitting assignments. (In terms of this range of functionality, TWEN

1760-421: Is a master classification system of U.S. law, and is claimed to be "the only recognized legal taxonomy ." The West Key Number System was created by West Publishing Company and can be described as a highly detailed index of over 110,000 legal topics and sub-topics. The index serves as the backbone for legal information published by West, which appears in the company's print publications, and now on Westlaw . TWEN

1848-454: Is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law , state and federal statutes , administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, treatises , legal forms and other information resources. Most legal documents on Westlaw are indexed to

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1936-598: Is available online at citeadvisor.westlaw.com, or as software for a word processor. Westlaw CourtExpress allows searching of court docket information. Westlaw Watch allows users to manage periodic monitoring of news and other databases for topics of interest. Westlaw WebPlus provides a web search engine with a focus on legal information sites. The Westlaw Litigator website provides access to legal calendaring and other litigation related applications. Westlaw Today curates legal news and email alerts written by attorneys and Reuters reporters. The West Key Number System

2024-500: Is available, permitted parties to rely on any report "with the name of a barrister annexed to it". While maritime cases often have a contract or tort element and are reported in the standard volumes, the standard source for maritime cases is the Lloyd's Law Reports, which covers matters including maritime matters such as carriage of goods by sea , international trade law , and admiralty law . The Session Cases report cases heard in

2112-516: Is similar to other educational systems such as Blackboard, marketed by Blackboard Inc. ). Law school professors occasionally use it for their classes, and it is used by librarians and career services offices. Students can also create and manage their own courses for law reviews, journals and any student organization. In February 2005, after the ChoicePoint identity theft incidents became public, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) publicized

2200-689: Is supplemented by other reports such as the Scottish Civil Case Reports and Green's Weekly Digest. In each state of the United States , there are published reports of all cases decided by the courts having appellate jurisdiction going back to the date of their organization. There are also complete reports of the cases decided in the United States Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts having appellate jurisdiction since their creation under

2288-711: Is the most-cited law journal and it ranks among the country's most-cited law reviews of any kind. Published monthly, the MLR provides timely treatment of significant developments in law through articles contributed by judges, leading scholars and practitioners. Bangladesh Legal Decisions is published under the authority of the Bangladesh Bar Council. The other law reports include Bangladesh Law Chronicles, Lawyers and Jurists, BCR, ADC, Bangladesh Legal Times and Bangladesh Law Times. The online law report in Bangladesh

2376-487: Is the official reporter for Supreme Court decisions. In addition, some private reporters have been authorised to publish the Court's decisions. Pakistan inherited a common law system upon independence from Great Britain in 1947, and thus its legal system relies heavily on law reports. The most comprehensive law book is the "Pakistan Law Decisions" (PLD), which contains judgments from the Supreme Court of Pakistan ,

2464-570: Is the person authorized to publish the Court's cases in the bound volumes of the United States Reports . Today, in American English , reporter also denotes the books themselves. In Commonwealth English , these are described by the plural term law reports , the title that usually appears on the covers of the periodical parts and the individual volumes. In common law countries, court opinions are legally binding under

2552-673: The Federal Practice Digest together with the notes of decisions from the federal District Courts and Courts of Appeals . Digests are also published for West's National Reporter System . Specialty subject digests exist, such as the Education Law Digest, and the Social Security Digest. For nationwide research, about once a month, West publishes a General Digest volume, which incorporates classified digest notes from all reporters of

2640-659: The Federal Supplement (for district courts). For cases from federal circuit and district courts prior to 1880, U.S. courts use Federal Cases . The Federal Reporter , the Federal Supplement , and Federal Cases are all part of the NRS and include headnotes marked with West key numbers. West's NRS also includes several unofficial state-specific reporters for large states like California . The NRS now numbers well over 10,000 volumes; therefore, only

2728-553: The United States Patents Quarterly (USPQ). Today, both Westlaw and LexisNexis also publish a variety of official and unofficial reporters covering the decisions of many federal and state administrative agencies which possess quasi-judicial powers. A recent trend in American states is for bar associations to join a consortium called Casemaker . Casemaker gives members of a state bar access to

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2816-581: The American Digest in 1890, and hired John A. Mallory to "build upon Abbott's improvements in law digesting". In 1909, West Publishing began to aggressively market its system of topic and key numbering as the West Key Number System. Since then, to reinforce how West digests and reporters are intended to be used together for legal research, the printed volumes of reporters in the National Reporter System are traditionally marked by

2904-498: The Apex Law Reports (ALR) provides timely treatment of significant developments in law through articles contributed by judges, leading scholars and practitioners. The Law Messenger is an internationally standard law report which started publication in 2016. It is the first law journal in Bangladesh which specifically publishes law decisions of Supreme Court of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan only. Mainstream Law Reports (MLR)

2992-536: The Free Access to Law Movement . Many law librarians and academics have commented on the changing system of legal information delivery brought about by the rapid growth of the World Wide Web . Professor Bob Berring writes that the "primacy of the old paper sets [print law reports] is fading, and a vortex of conflicting claims and products is spinning into place". In theory, court decisions posted on

3080-720: The High Court , Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of New Zealand . The reports, which were initially sorted by volume, are sorted by year. Three volumes per year are now published, with the number of volumes having increased over time from one, to two and now to three. The reports do not focus on any particular area of law, with subject specific reports filling this niche. There are approximately 20 privately published report series focusing on specialist areas of law. Some areas are covered by more than one report series—such as employment, tax and family law. Most Irish law reports are contained in The Irish Reports (IR), published by

3168-791: The Supreme Court Reports . There are also general reporters, such as the long-running Dominion Law Reports , that publishes cases of national significance. Other law report series include the Canadian Criminal Cases , the Canadian Criminal Reports , the Ontario Reports and the Rapports Juridiques du Québec . Neutral citations are also used to identify cases. The UK Supreme Court publishes on its own website

3256-590: The Supreme Court of New South Wales . The Victorian Reports are published by Little William Bourke on behalf of the Council of Law Reporting in Victoria and cover the Supreme Court of Victoria . The New Zealand Law Reports (NZLR) are the authorised reports of the New Zealand Council for Law Reporting and have been published continuously since 1883. The reports publish cases of significance from

3344-700: The Uniform Commercial Code Case Digest. Most of these use a topic and section format, while some, like the U.C.C. Case Digest, use a section format based on the statute or rules being annotated. The A.L.R. Digest, accompanying the American Law Reports , formerly had its own classification system, but was replaced in 2004 by West's American Law Reports Digest, which follows West's topic and key number system. Law reports Law reports or reporters are series of books that contain judicial opinions from

3432-612: The United States Constitution . The early reporters were unofficial as they were published solely by private entrepreneurs, but in the middle of the 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court and many state supreme courts began publishing their own official reporters. In the 1880s, the West Publishing Company started its National Reporter System (NRS), which is a family of regional reporters, each of which collects select state court opinions from

3520-524: The West Key Number System , which is West's master classification system of U.S. law. Westlaw supports natural language and Boolean searches . Other significant Westlaw features include KeyCite, a citation checking service, which customers use to determine whether cases or statutes are still good law, and a customizable tabbed interface that lets customers bring their most-used resources to the top. Other tabs organize Westlaw content around

3608-514: The "Civil Law Cases" (CLC), which as the name suggests deals with Civil cases; the "Pakistan Criminal Law Journal" (PCrLJ), which reports Criminal Cases; and the "Pakistan Tax Decisions" (PTD), on the Income Tax tribunal cases and their appeals. Kenya's first output of law reports was in the form of volumes under the citation E.A.L.R (East African Law Reports). They were first published between 1897 and 1905. Seven of these volumes were compiled by

West American Digest System - Misplaced Pages Continue

3696-536: The "Key Number Search Tool" results in a similar display of digest headnotes. Since all West headnote annotations are merged on Westlaw into a single database from which each Custom Digest is generated, there is no need to consult each separate series of the hard copy Decennial Digest. Full text of the cases may be accessed from the Custom Digest by clicking or activating the hyperlinks on the case citations. This will cause Westlaw to retrieve selected cases from

3784-716: The Chief Justices of the Territories and the presiding judge of the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa. Following the collapse of the East African Community, under whose auspices the reports were published, the reports went out of publication. The period before the resumption of the East Africa Law Reports saw sporadic and transitory attempts at law reporting. Firstly, with the authority of the then Attorney-General, six volumes named

3872-527: The Court of Session and Scottish cases heard on appeal in the House of Lords . The Justiciary Cases report from the High Court of Justiciary . Those two series are the most authoritative and are cited in court in preference to other report series, such as the Scots Law Times , which reports sheriff court and lands tribunal cases in addition to the higher courts. The law reports service of Scotland

3960-653: The Decennial Digests, and then updating that work with the most recent series of the General Digest. Some of the state and topical digests are revised to include the first cases in the jurisdiction, while the spines of the books of some of the other digests indicate that they are from "1933 to date," for instance, indicating that one must consult a prior series for references to earlier cases. The state, federal, regional, and topical digests are updated by interim pamphlets, pocket parts, replacement volumes, or

4048-740: The Hon Mr Justice R. W. Hamilton, who was then the Chief Justice of the Protectorate and the reports covered all courts of different jurisdictions. The 1922–1956 period saw the emergence of some twenty-one volumes of the Kenya Law Reports (under the citation K.L.R). These reports included the decisions of the High Court only and were collated, compiled and edited by different puisne judges and magistrates. Then came

4136-711: The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Ireland. Other reports are contained in the Irish Law Reports Monthly (ILRM) and various online collections of court decisions. In Bangladesh, the law reports are published according to the provisions of the Law Reports Act, 1875. There are many law reports now in Bangladesh. The most widely known being the Dhaka Law Report which started publication in 1949. Published monthly,

4224-576: The Kenya Law Reports" (section 3 of the Act). The Kenya Law Reports are the official law reports of the Republic of Kenya which may be cited in proceedings in all courts of Kenya (section 21 of the Act). Cases of Hong Kong are predominantly published in the authorised Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Reports (HKCFAR) and Hong Kong Law Reports and Digests (HKLRD), as well as the unauthorised but

4312-619: The Kenyan Parliament passed the National Council for Law Reporting Act, 1994 and gave the Council the exclusive mandate of: "publication of the reports to be known as the Kenya Law Reports which shall contain judgments, rulings and opinions of the superior courts of record and also undertake such other publications as in the opinion of the Council are reasonably related to or connected with the preparation and publication of

4400-761: The New Kenya Law Reports covering the period between and including the years 1976 to 1980 were published by the East African Publishing House . These reports included the decisions of the High Court and Court of Appeal of Kenya and were compiled by the Late Hon Mr Justice S. K. Sachdeva and were edited by Mr Paul H Niekirk and the Hon Mr Justice Richard Kuloba, a judge of the High Court of Kenya . The publication of these reports ceased when

4488-526: The Privy Council. They covered only those appeals filed from the territories. The East Africa Law Reports (cited as E.A.) were introduced in 1957 and were published in nineteen consecutive volumes until 1975. These reports covered decisions of the Court of Appeal for East Africa and the superior courts of the constituent territories, namely, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Aden, Seychelles and Somaliland. They were published under an editorial board consisting of

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4576-467: The United States have their own Westlaw sites, and Westlaw's foreign content is available online. For instance, Westlaw Canada from Carswell includes the Canadian Abridgment and KeyCite Canada, and Westlaw UK provides information from Sweet & Maxwell and independent law reports , case analysis and case status icons. More recently, Westlaw China was introduced, with laws and regulations, cases, digests, and status icons (similar to KeyCite flags), for

4664-567: The Web (versus the standard volume and page number used for print law reports). Furthermore, turning away from the traditional "official-commercial" print report model raises questions about the accuracy, authority, and reliability of case law found on the Web. The answer to these questions will be determined, in large part, through changing government information policies , and by the degree of influence exerted by commercial database providers on global legal information markets . Reports usually come in

4752-515: The Web expand access to the law beyond the specialized law library collections used primarily by lawyers and judges . The general public can more readily find court opinions online, whether posted on Web-accessible databases (such as the Hong Kong Judiciary public access site, above), or through general Web search engines . Questions remain, however, on the need for a uniform and practical citation format for cases posted on

4840-429: The West Key Number System to determine and immediately alert legal professionals that case law they are reviewing has been either overturned, or may have history that deems the precedential value of the opinion invalid. KeyCite was introduced to Westlaw in 1997 and was the first citator to seriously challenge Shepard's Citations , on which American legal professionals had relied for generations. Shepard's had become such

4928-510: The West National Reporter System. These are then cumulated into a Decennial Digest . Decennial implies that this occurs every ten years, but in the past several decades, there have been Decennial Digest Parts I and II (the 11th Series now has Part III, so the cumulation is now more frequent. However, the various Decennial Digests are not cumulated. Thus, completing such a search over several decades requires consulting

5016-404: The company responded to the controversy by announcing it had eliminated access to full SSNs for 85 percent of its clients who previously could retrieve this information, mostly lawyers and government agencies. In the mid-1980s, Westlaw sued LexisNexis over copyright infringement . LexisNexis's "star pagination" system, a feature that let users of either research system find the printed page of

5104-513: The court's judgments after they have been handed down, together with the ICLR summary (or "headnote"). In England and Wales , beginning with the reports of cases contained in the Year Books ( Edward II to Henry VIII ) there are various sets of reports of cases decided in the higher English courts down to the present time. Until the nineteenth century, both the quality of early reports, and

5192-726: The decisions of the Court of Appeal of Kenya selected over that period. Law reports relating to special topics have also been published. Ten volumes of the Court of Review Law Reports covering the period 1953 to 1962 and including the decisions on customary law by the African Court of Review were published by the Government Printer. There was no editorial board and it is not known who the compilers of these reports were. Their apocryphal origin notwithstanding, they were commonly cited by legal practitioners and scholars. In 1994,

5280-476: The extent to which the judge explained the facts of the case and his judgment, are highly variable, and the weight of the precedent may depend on the reputations of both the judge and the reporter. Such reports are now largely of academic interest, having been overtaken by statutes and later developments, but binding precedents can still be found, often most cogently expressed. In 1865, the nonprofit Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR) for England and Wales

5368-444: The fact that Westlaw has a database containing a large amount of private information on practically all living Americans. Besides widely available information such as addresses and phone numbers, Westlaw also includes Social Security numbers (SSNs), previous addresses, dates of birth, and other information lawyers use to do background checks on behalf of their clients. While there is no known case of identity theft involving Westlaw,

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5456-400: The form of sturdy hardcover books with most of the design elements on the spine (the part that a lawyer would be most interested in when searching for a case). The volume number is usually printed in large type to make it easy to spot. Gold leaf is traditionally used on the spine for the name of the report and for some decorative lines and bars. In lawyer portraits and advertisements ,

5544-498: The largest law libraries maintain a full hard copy set in their on-site collections. Some government agencies use (and require attorneys and agents practicing before them to cite to) certain unofficial reporters that specialize in the types of cases likely to be material to matters before the agency. For example, for both patent and trademark practice, the United States Patent and Trademark Office requires citation to

5632-546: The law of the People's Republic of China . Westlaw Ireland (IE) was established in 2002, covering information found in Round Hall publications as well as legislation, books, cases, current awareness and full-text articles from many of the country's notable legal journals. Westlaw is used in over 68 countries. Westlaw is descended from QUIC/LAW, a Canadian computer-assisted legal research project operated by Queen's University from 1968 to 1973. The original name stood for "Queen's University Investigation of Computers and Law." It

5720-412: The law reporter's contribution. Thus, law students are warned that the headnote is not part of the decision rendered, since headnotes occasionally contain misinterpretations of the law, and are not part of the official judgment. (In the United States, however, the headnote, also called the syllabus, is sometimes written by the court itself, which fact is stated.) The development of the Internet created

5808-462: The official opinions, so lawyers and law journals must cite the unofficial report until the case comes out in the official report. But once a court opinion is officially published, case citation rules usually require a person to cite to the official reports. A good printed law report in traditional form usually contains the following items: It is only the last item that is authoritative. The others, although useful for its understanding, are only

5896-400: The official regulator of the enrolled lawyers of the country; the Bangladesh Bar Council. Various others for example, Bangladesh Law Chronicles, Bangladesh Legal Times, Lawyers and Jurists, Counsel Law Reports, Legal Circle Law Reports, Bangladesh Legal Times, BCR, ADC are also in operation. The decisions of the lower judiciary are not reported in any law report. The Supreme Court Reports (SCR)

5984-442: The oldest Hong Kong Cases (HKC). Some specialist series are available including the Hong Kong Family Law Reports (HKFLR), Hong Kong Public Law Reports (HKPLR) and Conveyancing and Property Reports (CPR). Chinese-language judgments are published in the Hong Kong Chinese Law Reports and Translation (HKCLRT). The Hong Kong Law Reports and Digests were published as the Hong Kong Law Reports (HKLR) until 1997. Westlaw Westlaw

6072-480: The opportunity for courts to publish their decisions on Web sites . This is a relatively low cost publication method compared to paper and makes court decisions more easily available to the public (particularly important in common law countries where court decisions are major sources of law ). Because a court can post a decision on a Web site as soon as it is rendered, the need for a quickly printed case in an unofficial, commercial report becomes less crucial. However,

6160-468: The original foundation for what would become Westlaw. West's chief competitor in the legal information retrieval market is LexisNexis . (Ironically, Lawford and von Briesen sold what by then was called QuickLaw to LexisNexis in 2002. ) Both Westlaw and LexisNexis started in the 1970s as dial-up services with dedicated terminals. The earliest versions used acoustic couplers or key phones; then smaller terminals with internal modems . Westlaw's terminal

6248-421: The period covering 1934 to 1956 which saw the birth of the famous Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa Law Reports (E.A.L.R). These reports comprised twenty-three volumes altogether which were also compiled by puisne judges and magistrates, a Registrar of the High Court and a Registrar of the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa . These volumes reported the decisions of the then Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa and of

6336-443: The principle of stare decisis – a system of legal precedents – to ensure the courts deliver consistent rulings on similar legal issues, regardless of the political or social status of the parties involved. As such, legal professionals must be certain that the legal citations they use to reinforce their arguments are accurate and still "good law." KeyCite leverages Westlaw technologies, West's attorney-authored case law headnotes and

6424-532: The publishers of unofficial reports to maintain a competitive advantage over the official ones, unofficial reports usually provide helpful research aids (e.g., summaries, indexes), like the editorial enhancements used in the West American Digest System . Some commercial publishers also provide court opinions in searchable online databases that are part of larger fee-based, online legal research systems, such as Westlaw , Lexis-Nexis or Justis. Unofficially published court opinions are also often published before

6512-508: The publishing house folded them up ostensibly on account of lack of funds. Later, two volumes of what were known as the Kenya Appeal Reports were published for the period 1982–1992 by Butterworths, a private entity, under the editorship of The Hon Chief Justice A.R.W. Hancox (hence the pseudonym "Hancox Reports") who had the assistance of an editorial board of seven persons. These reports, as their name suggested, included only

6600-562: The result list even further. On the results page, users can also see links to related secondary sources relevant to their research. WestlawNext also provides folders for storing portions of the research selected by the user. The classic Westlaw.com platform was retired in August 2015. WestlawNext was renamed "Thomson Reuters Westlaw", effective in February 2016. KeyCite is a case citator used in United States legal research that provides

6688-459: The rows of books visible behind the lawyer are usually reports. Each province in Canada has an official reporter series that publishes superior court and appellate court decisions of the respective province. The federal courts, such as the Federal Court , Federal Court of Appeal , and Tax Court , each have their own reporter series. The Supreme Court of Canada has its own Reporter series,

6776-627: The rule of stare decisis ( precedent ). That rule requires a court to apply a legal principle that was set forth earlier by a court of a superior (sometimes, the same) jurisdiction dealing with a similar set of facts. Thus, the regular publication of such opinions is important so that everyone— lawyers , judges , and laymen—can all find out what the law is, as declared by judges. Official law reports or reporters are those authorized for publication by statute or other governmental ruling. Governments designate law reports as official to provide an authoritative, consistent, and authentic statement of

6864-583: The specific work needs of litigators, in-house corporate practitioners, and lawyers who specialize in any of over 150 legal topics. Most customers are attorneys or law students, but other individuals can also obtain accounts. Westlaw was created in 1975 by West Publishing , a company whose headquarters have been in Eagan, Minnesota , since 1992; West was acquired by the Thomson Corporation in 1996. Several of Thomson's law-related businesses outside

6952-488: The state or territory. The Australian Law Reports are the largest series of unauthorised reports although there are several others general reports and reports relating to specific areas of the law, e.g. the Australian Torts Reports publish decisions from any state or federal court relating to tort law . The NSW Law Reports are published by the Council of Law Reporting for New South Wales and cover

7040-433: The topics are listed in alphabetical order and printed on the spines . The "Descriptive Word Index" provides guidance as to the proper topics and key numbers. The digest system includes digests for the individual states (except for Delaware, Nevada and Utah). The U.S. Supreme Court, the Court of Federal Claims, bankruptcy courts, and military courts each have an individual digest, and all their decisions are also included in

7128-488: The use of "web dialogs", emulating the piling of open books on a table. Westmate was discontinued on June 30, 2007. West introduced WestlawNext on February 8, 2010. The main advances are that a user can start a search without first selecting a database, which is helpful because WestLaw has over 40,000 databases, and the search screen allows one to click checkboxes to select the jurisdiction and nature of material wanted. A new search algorithm, referred to as WestSearch, executes

7216-544: The various provincial High Courts, the Service, Professional and Election Tribunals as well as the superior courts of territories such as Azad Kashmir. PLD is augmented by other books, most notably the "Yearly Law Reports" (YLR), and the "Monthly Law Digest" (MLD). The Supreme Court also has its own law book, the "Supreme Court Monthly Review" (SCMR), which lists more recent cases that the appex court heard. In addition, there are books dealing with specific areas of law, such as

7304-462: The very ease of internet publication has raised new concerns about the ease with which internet-published decisions can be modified after publication, creating uncertainty about the validity of internet opinions. Decisions of courts from all over the world can now be found through the WorldLII Web site, and the sites of its member organizations. These projects have been strongly encouraged by

7392-402: Was based on Borland C++ around 1997, and then changed to a program compiled on a Microsoft platform that incorporated portions of Internet Explorer . This was the first program to incorporate HTML ; prior to that, Westmate had "jumps" indicated by triangles instead of " links ." Shortly after that, both publishers started developing web browser interfaces, with Westlaw's being notable for

7480-481: Was directed by Hugh Lawford and Richard von Briesen, and the original code was based on an internal IBM text search project called INFORM/360. The IBM code turned out to be incomplete and required substantial modifications. In 1973, the project was commercialized in the form of a new company called QL Systems and a new product name, QL/SEARCH. In 1976, QL Systems licensed the QL/SEARCH software to West Publishing as

7568-591: Was founded, and it has gradually become the dominant publisher of reports in the UK . It has compiled most of the best available copies of pre-1866 cases into the English Reports . Post-1865 cases are contained in the ICLR's own Law Reports . Even today, the UK government does not publish an official report, but its courts have promulgated rules stating that the ICLR reports must be cited when available. Historical practice, which may still apply where no other report

7656-419: Was known as WALT, for West Automatic Law Terminal. Around 1989, both started offering programs for personal computers that emulated the terminals, and when Internet access became available, an Internet address (such as westlaw.com) became an alternative that could be selected within the "Communications Setup" option in the client program, instead of a dial-up number. West's program was known as Westmate. It

7744-656: Was not the original creator of the digest system which now bears his name; it predates the creation of the National Reporter System. In 1847, Little, Brown and Company started to publish the United States Digest , a digest of all state and federal case law since 1790. In 1870, Little, Brown hired brothers Benjamin and Austin Abbott to start over and prepare a new series of the United States Digest from scratch. Then in 1889, West Publishing Company acquired Abbott's United States Digest from Little, Brown, renamed it

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