The ''United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition'', or ''Lawyers' Edition'' (L. Ed. and L. Ed. 2d in

case citation Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case c ...

s), is an unofficial

reporter A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

opinions An opinion is a judgement, Point of view (philosophy), viewpoint, or Proposition, statement that is not conclusive, as opposed to facts, which are truth, true statements. Definition A given opinion may deal with subjectivity, subjective matters ...

. The ''Lawyers' Edition'' was established by the Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company of

Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...

in 1882, and features coverage of Supreme Court decisions going back to 1790. The first ''Lawyers' Edition'' series corresponds to the official ''

United States Reports The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record (law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, orders, case tables (list of every case decided), in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner ( ...

'' from

volume 1 Volume One, Volume 1, Volume I or Vol. 1 may refer to: Albums * ''Volume One'' (The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album), 1966 * ''Volume One'' (Sleep album) * ''Volume One'' (Fluff album) * ''Volume One'' (She & Him album), 2008 * ''Volum ...

to volume 351, whereas the second series contains cases starting from the official reporter volume 352. It is currently published by

LexisNexis LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York, New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper searc ...

. The ''Lawyers' Edition'' differs from the official reporter in that the editors write

headnote A headnote is a brief summary of a particular point of law that is added to the text of a court decision to aid readers in locating discussion of a legal issue in an opinion. As the term implies, headnotes appear at the beginning of the pub ...

s and case summaries, as well as provide annotations to some cases, and decisions are published far in advance of the official reporter. As such, it is similar to West's unofficial '' Supreme Court Reporter'' (S. Ct.). ''Lawyers' Edition'' case reports differ from ''Supreme Court Reporter'' case reports in three respects. First, coverage in ''Supreme Court Reporter'' does not begin until '' Johnson v. Waters'', 108 U.S. 4 (1882), while ''Lawyers' Edition'' covers opinions back to the first volume of ''United States Reports''. Second, while both reporters contain headnotes written by the reporters' editors, the ''Lawyers' Edition'' headnotes are not keyed to the

West American Digest System The West American Digest System is a system of identifying points of law from reported cases and organizing them by topic and key number. The system was developed by Thomson West, West Publishing to organize the entire body of Law of the United Sta ...

's topic and key number system. Third, ''Lawyers' Edition'' historically included analytical articles, referred to as "annotations", similar to those contained in

American Law Reports In American law, the ''American Law Reports'' are a resource used by American lawyers to find a variety of sources relating to specific legal rules, doctrines, or principles. It has been published since 1919, originally by Lawyers Cooperative Pub ...

; these annotations were eventually discontinued.

International Thomson Organization International Thomson Organization (ITO) was a Canadian holding company that was active from 1978 to 1989, with interests in publishing, travel, and natural resources. It was created as a part of a corporate restructuring of the Thomson Organizat ...

acquired Lawyers Cooperative Publishing in 1989, shortly before it merged with Thomson Newspapers to become the

Thomson Corporation Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organization and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to form Thomson Reut ...

(parent of the Michie Company) acquired the rights to the ''Lawyers' Edition'', along with a number of other law publications and related assets, from the Thomson Corporation in January 1997. Thomson, in acquiring

West Publishing West (also known by its original name, West Publishing) is a business owned by Thomson Reuters that publishes legal, business, and regulatory information in print, and on electronic services such as Westlaw. Since the late 19th century, West has ...

, was required to divest itself of many titles through a

consent decree A consent decree is an agreement or settlement that resolves a dispute between two parties without admission of guilt (in a criminal case) or liability (in a civil case). Most often it is such a type of settlement in the United States. The ...

by the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...

References

External links

* Supreme Court of the United States Case law reporters of the United States {{US-law-stub