United States Reports
Encyclopedia
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
. Opinions of the court in each case, prepended with a headnote prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, and any concurring or dissenting opinions are published sequentially. The Court's Publication Office oversees the binding and publication of the volumes of United States Reports, although the actual printing, binding, and publication are performed by private firms under contract with the United States Government Printing Office
United States Government Printing Office
The United States Government Printing Office is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States federal government. The office prints documents produced by and for the federal government, including the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Executive Office of the President, executive...
.
Citation
For lawyers, citations to U.S. Reports are the standard reference for Supreme Court decisions. Under the commonly accepted citation protocolBluebook
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, a style guide, prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States. The Bluebook is compiled by the Harvard Law Review Association, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal....
, the case Brown, et al., v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas is cited thus:
- Brown v. Board of EducationBrown v. Board of EducationBrown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
This citation indicates that the decision of the Court in the case entitled Brown v. Board of Education (as properly abbreviated per the aforementioned citation protocol), decided in 1954, can be found beginning at page 483 of volume 347 of the United States Reports.
History
The early volumes of the United States Reports were originally published privately by the individual Supreme Court Reporters. As was the practice in EnglandNominate reports
Nominate reports is a legal term from common law jurisdictions referring to the various published reports of English cases in various Courts from the Middle Ages to the 1860s when law reporting was officially taken over by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting, for example Edmund F...
, the reports were designated by the names of the reporters who compiled them: Dallas's Reports, Cranch's Reports, etc.
None of the decisions appearing in the first volume and most of the second volume of United States Reports is actually a decision of the United States Supreme Court. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
courts, dating from the colonial period and the first decade after Independence. Alexander Dallas
Alexander J. Dallas (statesman)
Alexander James Dallas was an American statesman who served as the U.S. Treasury Secretary under President James Madison....
, a lawyer and journalist, of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, had been in the business of reporting these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling his case reports in a bound volume, which he called Reports of cases ruled and adjudged in the courts of Pennsylvania, before and since the Revolution. This would come to be known as the first volume of Dallas Reports.
When the United States Supreme Court, along with the rest of the new Federal Government, moved in 1791 from New York City to the nation’s temporary capital, in Philadelphia, Dallas was appointed the Supreme Court’s first unofficial and unpaid Supreme Court Reporter. (Court reporters in that age received no salary, but were expected to profit from the publication and sale of their compiled decisions.) Dallas continued to collect and publish Pennsylvania decisions in a second volume of his Reports; and, when the Supreme Court began hearing cases, he added those cases to his reports, starting towards the end of the second volume, 2 Dallas Reports, with West v. Barnes
West v. Barnes
West v. Barnes, 2 U.S. 401 , was the first United States Supreme Court decision and the earliest case calling for oral argument. Van Staphorst v. Maryland was docketed prior to West v. Barnes but settled before the Court heard the case: West was argued on August 2, 1791 and decided on August 3,...
(1791). Dallas went on to publish a total of four volumes of decisions during his tenure as Reporter.
When the Supreme Court moved to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, in 1800, Dallas remained in Philadelphia, and William Cranch
William Cranch
William Cranch was an American judge and the second reporter of decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.-Early life:Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, he was a nephew of Abigail Adams...
took over as unofficial reporter of decisions. In 1817 Congress made the Reporter of Decisions an official, salaried position, although the publication of the Reports remained a private enterprise for the reporter's personal gain. The reports, themselves, were the subject of an early copyright case, Wheaton v. Peters
Wheaton v. Peters
Wheaton v. Peters, , was the first United States Supreme Court ruling on copyright. The case upheld the power of Congress to make a grant of copyright protection subject to conditions and rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright. This was also Chief Justice John Marshall's last major...
, in which former reporter Henry Wheaton sued then current reporter Richard Peters for reprinting cases from Wheaton's Reports in abridged form.
In 1874, the U.S. government began to fund the reports' publication, creating the United States Reports. The earlier, private reports were retroactively numbered volumes 1–90 of the U.S. Reports, starting from the first volume of Dallas Reports. Therefore, decisions appearing in these early reports have dual citation forms: one for the volume number of the United States Reports, and one for the set of nominate reports. For example, the complete citation to McCulloch v. Maryland
McCulloch v. Maryland
McCulloch v. Maryland, , was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland...
is .
See also
- Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States
- Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume