Supreme Court Reporter
The Supreme Court Reporter is a publication produced by West Publishing Company that focuses on the decisions made by the United States Supreme Court. Established in the late 19th century, it began printing with the decisions from the October 1882 session. The publication offers advance sheets bi-monthly, which contain the text of recent court decisions, although these sheets do not include specific citation features such as "star paging." Instead, full citations can be found in the bound volumes of the Reporter.
The Reporter also includes case summaries and headnotes, which are organized by key numbers to facilitate legal research. These summaries are used in various other West publications to provide insight into judicial issues. Additionally, both the advance sheets and the bound editions feature comprehensive tables for cases, phrases, and statutes to enhance usability. To address delays in the release of final volumes, West introduced interim editions in 1986, ensuring that legal professionals have timely access to important Supreme Court rulings. This resource is essential for those seeking detailed and authoritative information about Supreme Court decisions and their implications.
Supreme Court Reporter
Definition: Unofficial edition of the Supreme Court’s decisions that began publication in 1883.
Significance: The Court’s official publication, United States Reports, is often delayed by months and in some instances years, whereas the Supreme Court Reporter publishes decisions in a more timely manner.
The Supreme Court Reporter is published by a private publishing house, the West Publishing Company. Printing was started with the decisions of the October, 1882, session. Advance sheets with final page numbering are issued on a semimonthly basis; however, the advance sheets do not supply “star paging” or parallel citations to the official reports, which can be found in the bound volume. The decisions in the advance sheets are, however, the same text of the decisions found in the bound volume.
West prepares the case summaries and headnotes and assigns each headnote a key number. Summaries of the judicial issues that make use of these key numbers and assigned topics appear in other West publications.
The advance sheets and the bound volume both contain tables of cases, phrases, and statutes. In 1986 in order to compensate for the delay in publication of the final bound volumes, West also began to publish a temporary “interim edition” of the bound volumes in two or three volumes.