Case Reporters & Digests
Reporters
Judicial opinions are published in sets called court reports or case reporters. There are separate reporters for the United States Supreme Court, the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the Federal District Courts. There are also reports for specialty federal courts such as bankruptcy and military justice. We house our federal case reporters on the third floor of the library. For quick access to Supreme Court opinions, we have placed the United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers Edition in the Reference area of the second floor. Specialty reporters, such as West's Bankruptcy Reporter, are shelved by topic in our main stacks.
States also publish their appellate court judicial opinions in case reporters. Some states still publish their own reports for appellate cases. The West's regional reporter system, which contains appellate court decisions from all 50 states, is located on the library's third floor.
To find the specific call number or location of a reporter, check our online catalog.
Digests
A digest is essentially a topical index to court opinions filled with abstracts of cases. Digests are published for federal, state, regional, and specialized court cases. There is also the American Digest System, which indexes court opinions from all jurisdictions.
Digests help you:
- Find a focused topic of research, and then move across jurisdictions using the same topic and key number found in the original search
- Find a citation if you only know the parties in the case, by using the case names index
Digests are shelved near the reporters they index. The law library has the following digests in print:
- Supreme Court Digest
- U.S. Supreme Court Digest, L.Ed
- West's ALR Digest (total reclassification of previously published ALR Digests, new in 2008)
- Kansas Digest [multiple locations - Reference section on each level]
- Missouri Digest [with state materials on level 3 - Missouri]
- Pacific Digest (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming)
- Northwest Digest (Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin)
- American Digest (Centennial 1658-1896)
- 1st Decennial (1897-1906)
- 2nd Decennial (1907-1916)
- 3rd Decennial (1916-1926)
- 4th Decennial (1926-1936)
- 5th Decennial(1936-1946)
- 6th Decennial(1946-1956)
- 7th Decennial(1956-1966)
- 8th Decennial(1966-1976)
- 9th Decennial, pt. 1 (1976-1981)
- 9th Decennial, pt. 2 (1981-1986)
- 10th Decennial, pt. 1 (1986-1991)
- 10th Decennial, pt. 2 (1991-1996)
- 11th Decennial, pt. 1 (1996-2001)
- 11th Decennial, pt. 2 (2001-2004)
- 11th Decennial, pt. 3 (2004-2007)
- General Digest, 11th series (2007)
- General Digest, 12th series (2008)
- Federal Digest (red, before 1939)
- Modern Federal Practice Digest (green, 1939-1961)
- West's Federal Practice Digest 2d (blue, 1961-1975)
- West's Federal Practice Digest 3d (red, 1976-1996)
- West's Federal Practice Digest 4th (blue, 1997- )
Also helpful in using digests is West's Analysis of American Law [Ref KF 240.W454 2008] which is a compilation of digest topics and the corresponding topical outlines of the West key number system. Published annually.
