History of the Law Reports of England and Wales

In this week’s blog post, the focus is on law reports – what they are, why they are so important and how they have developed and changed over the years. We will look at how they first started in England and Wales, then go all the way through to the current versions that we still read and use today. Although law reports have now been being published for centuries, it hasn’t always been in a way that is familiar to us or easy to use!

What are Law Reports?

Law reports are what they sound like – reports and records of the law, specifically, decided cases. You only need to think about the importance of the principle of precedent to see why they are needed. Without having a record of what cases have been heard and the outcome of these, judges can’t follow precedents, as they won’t know what has happened before. Therefore, common law relies on there being good reports to look back at; otherwise, no judge could ever set a precedent and nearly all law would have to come from Acts of Parliament.

Law reports are particularly important for the value they add. They are not just case transcripts, they also include things like headnotes, which are summaries of the main legal issues of the case, and a case digest, which is a summary of the facts of the case. There may also be catchwords, which is a list of key legal points, or tables of authority, which give details of cases and legislation cited by judges as influential when they were reaching their decision. All of these things can help readers to understand the case better and find the reports easier to use. Not only this, but it can also help to add context to the case, explaining why it is important and how it fits in with the rest of the law.

As well as making the law accessible for the purpose of precedents, law reports also make it accessible to the general public. They are relatively straightforward to understand, and features like headnotes and case digests make it easy to see at a glance what the legal situation is.

Year Books

Year Books are the very first sort of law report in England and Wales. The earliest examples date all the way back to 1268, continuing through to the last one published 1535. While these are definitely of historical interest and show what the law of the times was and how it was applied, they are not often used by law scholars. The Year Books are written in either Latin or Law French, so they are not easy for the average person to understand at the best of times! This lack of accessibility is not helped by the fact that they were originally written by lawyers for lawyers, so there was never any intent of the general public reading them.

The Year Books are focused on law procedure and the pleas entered, rather than a strict recording of the facts of the case, judgment and reasoning, which is another reason they are mostly used from a historical perspective. In addition, the law from the time the Year Books were being published is unlikely to be relevant to modern law. However, if you do want to read any of them, some of the more important cases have been gathered together and published in the Seldon Society series or the Rolls series. These have also translated the cases to make them more useful to the general public and scholars alike.

Private Reports

After the Year Books, from 1535 to 1865, private reports were published. These are called this because they are produced and published by private individuals, then made available publically under the name of this private publisher. The problem with this is that there is no guarantee of quality or even accuracy. Some, such as the Plowden, Coke and Burrows reports are known to be reliable, so these are often referred to for details of older cases. However, there are also other private reports that are useful, many of which have been collected and republished as the English Reports.

Modern Reports

Finally, there are the modern law reports which started in 1865 and have continued to the present day. Due to the problems mentioned above with the reliability and accuracy of private law reports, the Council for Law Reporting was created, which was registered in 1870 as a corporate body called the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales.

The Council produces its own reports, ensuring they are accurate and complete, which are known as the Law Reports. These will be used in preference to any other citation. Of course, there are now many other law reports that can be used if a particular case is not in the Law Reports.

Wrapping Up

I hope that this helps you to understand how law reporting has evolved over the years. In my next blog post, we will be looking at some of the types of modern law reports, so come back in two weeks for that!

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