Case law reporting in US courts
The
Federal Reporter
(
ISSN
1048-3888
) is a
case law reporter
in the
United States
that is published by
West Publishing
and a part of the
National Reporter System
.
[1]
It begins with cases decided in 1880; pre-1880 cases were later retroactively compiled by West Publishing into a separate reporter,
Federal Cases
. The fourth and current
Federal Reporter
series publishes
decisions
of the
United States courts of appeals
and the
United States Court of Federal Claims
; prior series had varying scopes that covered decisions of other federal courts as well. Though the
Federal Reporter
is an unofficial reporter and West is a private company that does not have a legal monopoly over the court opinions it publishes, it has so dominated the industry in the United States that legal professionals, including judges, uniformly
cite
to the
Federal Reporter
for included decisions.
[2]
Approximately 30 new volumes are published each year.
[1]
Distinctions
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The
Federal Reporter
has always published decisions only from federal courts lower than the
Supreme Court of the United States
, but not the Supreme Court itself. Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court are published in one official reporter and two unofficial reporters, which are, respectively, the
United States Reports
,
Supreme Court Reports
(a National Reporter System member published by West), and the
United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition
.
Beginning in 1932, West stopped publishing federal district court cases in the
Federal Reporter
and began to publish them in a separate reporter, the
Federal Supplement
.
[1]
Features and print format
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The
Federal Reporter
organizes court opinions within each volume by the date of the decision, and includes the full official text of the court's opinion. West editors add headnotes that summarize key principles of law in the cases, and Key Numbers that classify the decisions by topic within the
West American Digest System
.
Only decisions designated by the courts as "for publication?those with full
precedential
value for which citation in court filings is permissible?are included in the
Federal Reporter
. "Unpublished" decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals may be found in the
Federal Appendix
, also published by West. New opinions are first issued by West in weekly pamphlets called "Advance Sheets", to be eventually supplanted by the final hardbound, successively numbered volumes. Three series of
Federal Reporter
have been published to date, with the fourth series started in June 2021.
Series
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Federal Reporter
[
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]
Citation:
F.
|
Published: 1880?1924
|
Volumes: 300
|
Courts covered:
|
Federal Reporter, Second Series
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]
Citation:
F.2d
|
Published: 1924?1993
|
Volumes: 999
|
Courts covered:
|
Opinions
|
Federal Reporter, Third Series
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]
Citation:
F.3d
|
Published: 1993?2021
|
Volumes: 999
|
Courts covered:
|
Opinions
|
Federal Reporter, Fourth Series
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]
Citation:
F.4th
|
Published: 2021?present
|
Courts covered:
|
Electronic sources
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Wikisource
has original text related to this article:
The
Federal Reporter
, including its supplementary material, is also available at websites including
OpenJurist.org
, on
CD-ROM
compilations, and on West's online legal database,
Westlaw
. Because individual court cases are identified by
case citations
that consist of printed page and volume numbers, the electronic text of the opinions incorporates the page numbers of the printed volumes with "star pagination" formatting?the numbers are boldfaced within brackets and with asterisks prepended (i.e.,
[*4]
) to stand out from the rest of the text.
Though West has
copyright
over its original headnotes and keynotes, the opinions themselves are
public domain
and accordingly may be found in other sources, chiefly
Lexis
, Westlaw's primary competitor. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has also ruled that Lexis can copy the page numbers from the
Federal Reporter
to allow for proper citation without violating West's copyright.
[6]
Notes
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External links
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