There are legal systems that operate on codes i.e. a list of legal obligations that regulate the conduct of citizens. Not infrequently these are in fact the bringing together or an array of earlier legal decisions and laws to try to create a logical and comprehensive legal system – for instance the Codes of Justinian or the Napoleonic Codes.
However such codes must be updated from time to time as society becomes more complex or simply because new question arise e.g. are aeroplanes allowed to fly through the airspace above your land.
Any decision by a judge in court on how to apply a provision in a code or simply having reviewed earlier cases on a topic may be of interest to later lawyers and judges not least to guide lay people as to how their cases may fall out if they bring them to court. Thus was born the idea of the report of cases. Sometimes they are simply brief notes but nowadays they usually will be divided into sections:
(i) A couple of lines of potted summary
(ii) A headnote which gives a full summary of what the case was about followed by another summary of the decision by the judge.
(iii) Next (but sometimes at the end) who were the lawyers involved
(iv) A list of cases and statutes referred to both in argument and in the judgements (sometimes the statutes are quoted)
(v) The facts of the case in detail
(vi) A lengthy and often verbatim note of the judge’s judgement.
Follow this link to see an example of the very professional way a law report is set out by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting.