Law report - Knowledge

977:(ALR) provides timely treatment of significant developments in law through articles contributed by judges, leading scholars and practitioners. The Law Messenger is an internationally standard law report which started publication in 2016. It is the first law journal in Bangladesh which specifically publishes law decisions of Supreme Court of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan only. Mainstream Law Reports (MLR) is the most-cited law journal and it ranks among the country's most-cited law reviews of any kind. Published monthly, the MLR provides timely treatment of significant developments in law through articles contributed by judges, leading scholars and practitioners. Bangladesh Legal Decisions is published under the authority of the Bangladesh Bar Council. The other law reports include Bangladesh Law Chronicles, Lawyers and Jurists, BCR, ADC, Bangladesh Legal Times and Bangladesh Law Times. 555:) there are various sets of reports of cases decided in the higher English courts down to the present time. Until the nineteenth century, both the quality of early reports, and the extent to which the judge explained the facts of the case and his judgment, are highly variable, and the weight of the precedent may depend on the reputations of both the judge and the reporter. Such reports are now largely of academic interest, having been overtaken by statutes and later developments, but binding precedents can still be found, often most cogently expressed. 423: 948:. The reports, which were initially sorted by volume, are sorted by year. Three volumes per year are now published, with the number of volumes having increased over time from one, to two and now to three. The reports do not focus on any particular area of law, with subject specific reports filling this niche. There are approximately 20 privately published report series focusing on specialist areas of law. Some areas are covered by more than one report series—such as employment, tax and family law. 855: 525: 3037: 1109: 40: 3051: 653: 717: 240: 1830: 308:). Because a court can post a decision on a Web site as soon as it is rendered, the need for a quickly printed case in an unofficial, commercial report becomes less crucial. However, the very ease of internet publication has raised new concerns about the ease with which internet-published decisions can be modified after publication, creating uncertainty about the validity of internet opinions. 984:

which is published by the official regulator of the enrolled lawyers of the country; the Bangladesh Bar Council. Various others for example, Bangladesh Law Chronicles, Bangladesh Legal Times, Lawyers and Jurists, Counsel Law Reports, Legal Circle Law Reports, Bangladesh Legal Times, BCR, ADC are also in operation. The decisions of the lower judiciary are not reported in any law report.

705:(NRS), which is a family of regional reporters, each of which collects select state court opinions from a specific group of states. The National Reporter System is now the dominant unofficial reporter system in the U.S., and 21 states have discontinued their own official reporters and certified the appropriate West regional reporter as their official reporter. West and its rival, 578:. Even today, the UK government does not publish an official report, but its courts have promulgated rules stating that the ICLR reports must be cited when available. Historical practice, which may still apply where no other report is available, permitted parties to rely on any report "with the name of a barrister annexed to it". 1042:

Seychelles and Somaliland. They were published under an editorial board consisting of the Chief Justices of the Territories and the presiding judge of the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa. Following the collapse of the East African Community, under whose auspices the reports were published, the reports went out of publication.

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The reports are published without any judicial control or sanction, nor is there any provision to secure correctness or security against error, but as soon as a report is published of any case with the name of a barrister annexed to it the report is accredited, and may be cited as an authority before

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Law reports relating to special topics have also been published. Ten volumes of the Court of Review Law Reports covering the period 1953 to 1962 and including the decisions on customary law by the African Court of Review were published by the Government Printer. There was no editorial board and it is

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Reports (HKCFAR) and Hong Kong Law Reports and Digests (HKLRD), as well as the unauthorised but the oldest Hong Kong Cases (HKC). Some specialist series are available including the Hong Kong Family Law Reports (HKFLR), Hong Kong Public Law Reports (HKPLR) and Conveyancing and Property Reports (CPR).

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The period before the resumption of the East Africa Law Reports saw sporadic and transitory attempts at law reporting. Firstly, with the authority of the then Attorney-General, six volumes named the New Kenya Law Reports covering the period between and including the years 1976 to 1980 were published

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Kenya's first output of law reports was in the form of volumes under the citation E.A.L.R (East African Law Reports). They were first published between 1897 and 1905. Seven of these volumes were compiled by the Hon Mr Justice R. W. Hamilton, who was then the Chief Justice of the Protectorate and the

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In addition, there are books dealing with specific areas of law, such as the "Civil Law Cases" (CLC), which as the name suggests deals with Civil cases; the "Pakistan Criminal Law Journal" (PCrLJ), which reports Criminal Cases; and the "Pakistan Tax Decisions" (PTD), on the Income Tax tribunal cases

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It is only the last item that is authoritative. The others, although useful for its understanding, are only the law reporter's contribution. Thus, law students are warned that the headnote is not part of the decision rendered, since headnotes occasionally contain misinterpretations of the law, and

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After the Supreme Court of Bangladesh was established in 1972, its online law report is Supreme Court Online Bulletin and it initially published a law report, containing the judgments, orders and decisions of the Court. Another widely used law report in the country is the Bangladesh Legal Decisions

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Then came the period covering 1934 to 1956 which saw the birth of the famous Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa Law Reports (E.A.L.R). These reports comprised twenty-three volumes altogether which were also compiled by puisne judges and magistrates, a Registrar of the High Court and a Registrar of

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The East Africa Law Reports (cited as E.A.) were introduced in 1957 and were published in nineteen consecutive volumes until 1975. These reports covered decisions of the Court of Appeal for East Africa and the superior courts of the constituent territories, namely, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Aden,

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for cases posted on the Web (versus the standard volume and page number used for print law reports). Furthermore, turning away from the traditional "official-commercial" print report model raises questions about the accuracy, authority, and reliability of case law found on the Web. The answer to

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In 1994, the Kenyan Parliament passed the National Council for Law Reporting Act, 1994 and gave the Council the exclusive mandate of: "publication of the reports to be known as the Kenya Law Reports which shall contain judgments, rulings and opinions of the superior courts of record and also

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Some government agencies use (and require attorneys and agents practicing before them to cite to) certain unofficial reporters that specialize in the types of cases likely to be material to matters before the agency. For example, for both patent and trademark practice, the

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does not publish an official reporter for the federal courts at the circuit and district levels. However, just as the UK government uses the ICLR reporters by default, the U.S. courts use the unofficial West federal reporters for cases after 1880, which are the

139:). That rule requires a court to apply a legal principle that was set forth earlier by a court of a superior (sometimes, the same) jurisdiction dealing with a similar set of facts. Thus, the regular publication of such opinions is important so that everyone— 972:

In Bangladesh, the law reports are published according to the provisions of the Law Reports Act, 1875. There are many law reports now in Bangladesh. The most widely known being the Dhaka Law Report which started publication in 1949. Published monthly, the

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are the largest series of unauthorised reports although there are several others general reports and reports relating to specific areas of the law, e.g. the Australian Torts Reports publish decisions from any state or federal court relating to

674:, there are published reports of all cases decided by the courts having appellate jurisdiction going back to the date of their organization. There are also complete reports of the cases decided in the 586:

While maritime cases often have a contract or tort element and are reported in the standard volumes, the standard source for maritime cases is the Lloyd's Law Reports, which covers matters including

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undertake such other publications as in the opinion of the Council are reasonably related to or connected with the preparation and publication of the Kenya Law Reports" (section 3 of the Act).

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judgments are published in the Hong Kong Chinese Law Reports and Translation (HKCLRT). The Hong Kong Law Reports and Digests were published as the Hong Kong Law Reports (HKLR) until 1997.

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Later, two volumes of what were known as the Kenya Appeal Reports were published for the period 1982–1992 by Butterworths, a private entity, under the editorship of The Hon Chief Justice

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Today, both Westlaw and LexisNexis also publish a variety of official and unofficial reporters covering the decisions of many federal and state administrative agencies which possess

486: 1251: 1065:(hence the pseudonym "Hancox Reports") who had the assistance of an editorial board of seven persons. These reports, as their name suggested, included only the decisions of the 992:

The Supreme Court Reports (SCR) is the official reporter for Supreme Court decisions. In addition, some private reporters have been authorised to publish the Court's decisions.

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are not part of the official judgment. (In the United States, however, the headnote, also called the syllabus, is sometimes written by the court itself, which fact is stated.)

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to help lawyers find cases in its reporters. West digests and reporters have always featured a "Key Numbering System" with a unique number for every conceivable legal topic.

1292: 1038:. These volumes reported the decisions of the then Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa and of the Privy Council. They covered only those appeals filed from the territories. 1030:(under the citation K.L.R). These reports included the decisions of the High Court only and were collated, compiled and edited by different puisne judges and magistrates. 478: 1330: 690:. The early reporters were unofficial as they were published solely by private entrepreneurs, but in the middle of the 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court and many 591: 474: 1428: 162:

or other governmental ruling. Governments designate law reports as official to provide an authoritative, consistent, and authentic statement of a jurisdiction's

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The Kenya Law Reports are the official law reports of the Republic of Kenya which may be cited in proceedings in all courts of Kenya (section 21 of the Act).

394:(the part that a lawyer would be most interested in when searching for a case). The volume number is usually printed in large type to make it easy to spot. 1073:

not known who the compilers of these reports were. Their apocryphal origin notwithstanding, they were commonly cited by legal practitioners and scholars.

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over the official ones, unofficial reports usually provide helpful research aids (e.g., summaries, indexes), like the editorial enhancements used in the

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and were compiled by the Late Hon Mr Justice S. K. Sachdeva and were edited by Mr Paul H Niekirk and the Hon Mr Justice Richard Kuloba, a judge of the

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The Supreme Court also has its own law book, the "Supreme Court Monthly Review" (SCMR), which lists more recent cases that the appex court heard.

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writes that the "primacy of the old paper sets is fading, and a vortex of conflicting claims and products is spinning into place". In theory,

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Pakistan inherited a common law system upon independence from Great Britain in 1947, and thus its legal system relies heavily on law reports.

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must cite the unofficial report until the case comes out in the official report. But once a court opinion is officially published,

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has a series of authorised reports, e.g. the Victorian Reports, of decisions of the superior courts of the state or territory.

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The online law report in Bangladesh is Chancery Law Chronicles, which now publishes verdicts of Supreme Court of Bangladesh.

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This article is about law reports in general. For the law report published by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting, see

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and academics have commented on the changing system of legal information delivery brought about by the rapid growth of the

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marked with West key numbers. West's NRS also includes several unofficial state-specific reporters for large states like

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was used to refer to the individual persons who actually compile, edit, and publish such opinions. For example, the

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law reports, on the other hand, are not officially sanctioned and are published as a commercial enterprise. In

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Web site, and the sites of its member organizations. These projects have been strongly encouraged by the

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The most comprehensive law book is the "Pakistan Law Decisions" (PLD), which contains judgments from the

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publishes on its own website the court's judgments after they have been handed down, together with the

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Map of the U.S., showing areas covered by the Thomson West National Reporter System state law reports.

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is traditionally used on the spine for the name of the report and for some decorative lines and bars.

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and have been published continuously since 1883. The reports publish cases of significance from the

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is supplemented by other reports such as the Scottish Civil Case Reports and Green's Weekly Digest.

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The judgment (a verbatim transcript of the words used by the judge to explain his or her reasoning).

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Reports usually come in the form of sturdy hardcover books with most of the design elements on the

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A note of the arguments of counsel before the judge. (This is often omitted in modern reports.)

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Unofficially published court opinions are also often published before the official opinions, so

2958: 2943: 1163: 1153: 1143: 1138: 886: 683: 447: 359: 1218: 1184: 3062: 2655: 2333: 2144: 1476: 871: 709:, both publish unofficial reporters of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. West also publishes the 552: 190: 98: 44: 2783: 2129: 548: 470: 111: 378:, and by the degree of influence exerted by commercial database providers on global legal 8: 2938: 2078: 1995: 1472: 1055: 891: 785: 691: 455: 245: 2753: 2412: 2266: 2251: 2229: 1973: 1953: 1906: 1896: 1839: 1386: 737: 379: 640:

and lands tribunal cases in addition to the higher courts. The law reports service of

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A good printed law report in traditional form usually contains the following items:

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is the person authorized to publish the Court's cases in the bound volumes of the

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these questions will be determined, in large part, through changing government

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Cases of Hong Kong are predominantly published in the authorised Hong Kong

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The 1922–1956 period saw the emergence of some twenty-one volumes of the

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Decisions of courts from all over the world can now be found through the

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decisions of the respective province. The federal courts, such as the

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A recital of the facts of the case (unless appearing in the judgment).

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The New Zealand Law Reports (NZLR) are the authorised reports of the

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Questions remain, however, on the need for a uniform and practical

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created the opportunity for courts to publish their decisions on

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law reports or reporters are those authorized for publication by

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rules usually require a person to cite to the official reports.

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countries, court opinions are legally binding under the rule of

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