How The Digest System Works
Each case published in a West reporter is evaluated by an editor who identifies the points of law cited or explained in the case. The 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 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.
Read more about this topic: West American Digest System
Famous quotes containing the words digest, system and/or works:
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—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
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—Joan Sheingold Ditzion, Dennie, and Palmer Wolf. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)