Talk:Law report

Reporter definition

Reporters is only used to refer to a series of reports in the US. In Britain, Aust, NZ the term 'Reporter' continues to refer to the person who selects the case for publication, as it traditionally did. this whole article reads like it was written by someone in the US hoping that the dual meaning adopted there has been taken up elsewhere.

I suggest that the original meanings be used as the basis for the article intro, and the US variation be inserted under a US sub-heading.

Ultimately notes about the more famous historical 'reporters', as well the infamous ones may be links from this page, as may some discussion of modern reporting practices.

FedLawyer 02:11, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I drafted the article originally but was unaware of the differing meanings in the Commonwealth nations. I just looked up the relevant definitions in Black's Law Dictionary, the primary law dictionary used by American attorneys. You are correct that reporter primarily refers to the person and reports is the more accurate term for the books (although many U.S reports use the term reporter, like West's National Reporter System). The Black's definitions are mainly in line with the Commonwealth definition, except that the definition of report also includes: "Also termed reporter; law report; law reporter." So, I agree with your suggestion. Feel free to make your suggested edit at any time. --Coolcaesar 03:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

We care about the rest of the world? J/K. I say be bold and make the change too. mmmbeer^{T / C / ?} 03:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Can someone clarify what the proposal actually is? I would support a move to Law Report, if that is what you have in mind. For what it's worth, I strongly dislike "reporter", which British lawyers never use, and I've felt the need to disclaim the term, for example, at Case citation#England and Wales. AndyJones 10:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think the actual proposal, if I understand FedLawyer, would be to have an explanation of the person here (reporter) and to have the books at Law report. Note that Wikipedia style is to not capitalize after the first word unless the term is a proper noun. --Coolcaesar 16:50, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I support that. (And yes, Law report is right, Law Report was my mistake.) AndyJones 10:40, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Nearly ten years since this was raised, and it still hasn't been fixed. Does nobody read this stuff? I have just standardised "reporter" as "report" in the general sections (as that's the article title, and as I assume that "report" does make sense in US English, even though "reporter" may be the preferred term); and also in the "England and Wales" section (where "reporter" really jarred; but leaving one instance where the reference does appear to be to the person rather than the text). The issue doesn't arise in the Scotland, Ireland, Australia, NZ, Bangladesh, Kenya, or HK sections (maybe they've been previously fixed), and I haven't touched the other Commonwealth sections, as I don't know what the conventions are there: the titles of the Indian Supreme Court Law Reporter and the [Pakistan] Yearly Law Reporter suggests they follow US convention. How about Canada? GrindtXX (talk) 18:22, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Organising reports and reporters

is there some way to see or print the tree of connections created by Categories for this area. I have trouble getting my head around how it all links, without a schematic of some type? FedLawyer 10:46, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Photos of other law reports?

Well, I took some photos of the U.S. reporters for the article. But I haven't got the time to visit an academic law library that would be big enough to have foreign reporters. It would be great if someone in the U.K. or Australia could get a picture of their local law reports. --Coolcaesar 08:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Other subsidiary court reporters

I don't know the precise status, but could anyone add mention of U.S. Bankruptcy reports (B.R.)?LH 07:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

We need to consolidate this mess

Someone created a separate article for "Authorised and unauthorised law reports," which makes no sense. That information should be consolidated into this article. Also, it's clear there is a distinct difference between Australian English and American English idiom which needs to be explained in the article. In the United States the usage is always "official" versus "unofficial." Furthermore, the Australian article appears to describe a difference between a reserved judgment and a spoken judgment which is unknown in the United States.

An American judge issues a slip opinion, so-called because it is published by the court clerk as an unbound looseleaf document (like slips of paper) as opposed to a bound book. Eventually the slip opinions are collected and printed in the bound reporters. On rare occasions, an American judge will read an opinion from the bench.

Finally, another problem is that some Indian editor has put a scan of a reporter's cover page right into the article and it looks really messy. It would be more helpful if he or she could photograph a collection of them on a shelf, as I have done for the U.S. Reports and the Pacific Reporter.--Coolcaesar 06:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not in a position to photograph that collection, but I did clean up the presentation of the image on the page. Terry Carroll 01:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Merger Proposal

I agree with Coolcaeser's position in the first paragraph of "We need to consolidate this mess," above. There's no reason for the Authorised and unauthorised law reports article. It's a stub, will not likely grow beyond a stub, and a reader is well served by having the bit of information that's in that article included here instead of having to go off. Any objections? Terry Carroll 00:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The only concern I have is that the merged article needs to also explain the difference between the Australian and American terminology. In the United States, "official" and "unofficial" is the correct terminology. Also, in the United States, whether the reporter seeks the approval of the judges is usually not relevant. In the U.S., the official one is quite simply the reporter published by the judiciary (that is, by court employees directly responsible to a court's presiding judge), or by a private publisher pursuant to an express contractual agreement where the judiciary designates the publisher as the official reporter of decisions. An unofficial reporter is published by a private publisher with no direct contractual relationship with the judiciary; the unofficial reporter's personnel simply pick up the slip opinions at the clerk's window or download them online from the court's Web site like everyone else. --Coolcaesar 00:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that as a problem. We're talking about merging the article, not just deleting it. That info is present in the article to be merged.Terry Carroll 01:06, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

And while I'm at it, I propose to merge in the Supreme Court Reports stub, too, for similar reasons.Terry Carroll 01:06, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Did you actually read my response? The point of my response is that the information I am describing is not present in the article to be merged, but it should be put into this article when the merger occurs! --Coolcaesar 23:28, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I actually read your response. If the merge goes ahead and I'm the one doing it, I won't be adding any Australia-specific information not already present in the article. That should be left to someone who has that Australian-specific knowledge. If that's you, have at it. Terry Carroll 23:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The authorised/unauthorised issue is probably best merged into this article unless it expands into a substantial piece of its own. I don't think merging in articles about individual reports is a good idea, though, even if they're currently stubs. There are just too many different reporters to cover, and this article would be better off not being overwhelmed by that data. --Michael Snow (talk) 05:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Merger

I merged the Authorised and unauthorised law reports article into the Law report article. I titled a section "Official and unofficial case reporting." For better article organization, I also moved the "Free" (retitled "Open publication on the Internet") and "Cultural references" sections closer to the top. Walshga 06:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

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Common law bias?

The article currently carries a hatnote complaining that it "deal[s] primarily with common law and do[es] not represent a worldwide view of the subject". But do law reports even exist in civil law and other codified-law jurisdictions? There would certainly seem to be far less need for them, given that the judgments made in individual courts carry no wider import. I don't know the answer, but I pose the question. GrindtXX (talk) 21:43, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Over a year since I raised this, and no comments. If anyone has any views, please say now. If there's still nothing in a week or so, I propose deleting the hatnote, and adding a comment to the lede paragraph saying that law reports exits primarily in common law jurisdictions. GrindtXX (talk) 11:09, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Mr. Guye placed the template in 2018. Mr. Guye, can you please explain your concerns? Otherwise, I agree it should just be taken off. TJRC (talk) 00:04, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I strongly concur that the hatnote on this article is nonsense and should be deleted. --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:14, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@GrindtXX, TJRC, and Coolcaesar: If it is indeed true that law reports are more-or-less nonexistent in non-common law jurisdictions, then the template should be taken down. But I want to see evidence of this first. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  05:22, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Nah. If you have no evidence there's a problem, let's kill the template until you can produce some. TJRC (talk) 19:00, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Fully concur with User:TJRC. Thank you for taking care of this silliness. --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:02, 4 October 2020 (UTC)