Official and Unofficial Case Law Reporting
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 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 are referred to as unauthorised reports.
For 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 and Lexis-Nexis.
Unofficially published court opinions are also often published before 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.
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Famous quotes containing the words official, case, law and/or reporting:
“Well, on the official record you’re my son. But on this post you’re just another trooper. You heard me tell the recruits what I need from them. Twice that I will expect from you.... You’ve chosen my way of life. I hope you have the guts enough to endure it. But put outa your mind any romantic ideas that it’s a way to glory. It’s a life of suffering and of hardship and uncompromising devotion to your oath and your duty.”
—James Kevin McGuinness, and John Ford. Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke (John Wayne)
“I often used to think myself in the case of the fox-hunter, who, when he had toiled and sweated all day in the chase as if some unheard-of blessing was to crown his success, finds at last all he has got by his labor is a stinking nauseous animal. But my condition was yet worse than his; for he leaves the loathsome wretch to be torn by his hounds, whilst I was obliged to fondle mine, and meanly pretend him to be the object of my love.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man’s will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterred by such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)