Historical Introduction
Each of England & Wales, Scotland and Ireland had law reporters who would record decisions of the Courts from the earliest days and would have them printed and sold on a commercial basis each month or year or suchlike. The reports are usually named after the reporter and might have lasted for a few years or a great deal longer. Well known series are Adolphus & Ellis and Bevan. These are called the nominate reports and can still be found from time to time.
A huge problem with these reports was that sometimes an important case might only be in one set of these reports of which only 250 copies were ever printed in the early 1700’s. A lawyer who wanted to read the case might find it very difficult to find a copy of the report and the scarcity element meant that some could be very expensive indeed. Specialist law libraries appeared in many centres but even these often had incomplete selections of the nominate reports.
The Victorian Sort Out
Our Victorian forebears were very good at sorting out such problems and they did it in this way:
- They arranged a reprint of all the more important reports from within the old nominate reports – this became “The English Reports”
- They created the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting which sought to bring ‘in house’ all the commercial law reporters around at the time and standardise the reports that they produced – thus starting “the Official Law Reports”
There were some flaws in this arrangement. For one thing many series from the nominate reports were not included in the English Reports and for another there was no bar on the private publication of law reports still being produced and many series have started and fallen by the wayside over the years (whilst others have been a continuing success).
The Official Law Reports
These come in three series:
(i) 1865 – 1875 ‘First Series’
(ii) 1875 – 1890 ‘Second Series’
(iii) 1891 onwards ‘Third Series’
The way the cases reported was allocated within each series changed so that in the First Series on finds for example Exchequer and Scottish & Divorce Appeals, in the Second Series the Exchequer Division and in the Third Series these settled down to Appeal Cases, Chancery Division and so on. This can be confusing but is easily sorted out.
Here is not the place to explain how the citation of cases works as this section in about law reports, not legal research.
The incorporated Council has added extra series over recent years but basically this is the ‘standard’ set of law reports for the UK nowadays.
Weekly Law Reports (“WLR”)
Normally bound in black buckram these are a companion series to the Official Law Reports. They appears first as parts sent to subscribers throughout the year and seek to be more ‘up to the minute’ than the Official Reports.
They are also published by the Incorporated Council in volumes 1, 2 and 3 for each year commencing in 1953. Cases reported in volumes 2 & 3 will later appear in the Official Reports and for this reason one sometimes come across sets of the WLR which comprise just volume 1 for each year (since these will not appear in the Official Reports).
All England Law Reports (“All E R”)
This is a commercially produced set of law reports which started in 1936.
Usually bound in blue buckram and like the WLR is sent to subscribers in parts throughout the year.
Another companion set reproduces a selection of the older cases (which had been in the nominate reports) going back to the 1300’s.
Other Reports
There are such a multitude of these that no attempt is made here to list them all although it is hoped to list the main ones in time.
Citation
As the same case may appear in several of the series mentioned above the UK Courts have laid down which has priority – see Practice Direction (Citation of Authorities) [2012] 1 WLR 780, [2012] 2 All ER 255. The essential idea is that if the case is reported in the Official Law reports then this should be the copy of the report produced to the Court. If the case is not in the Official Reports then you look for it in the WLR and so on. Law reports are generally preferred to transcripts because they have a potted guide to the case in the headnote (so the judge can pick up the context quickly), usually a brief guide to the key facts and sometimes a summary of the arguments advanced by the advocates.