The range of law reports

Introduction

Strictly speaking there is no ‘official’ series of law reports, but in practice the reports published by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales, a non-profit-making body founded and run by the legal profession, are often referred to as the ‘official’ reports.

The leading series of law reports

The law reports published by the Incorporated Council are predominantly general series in terms of their subject matter, and include Appeal Cases (AC), Chancery Division (Ch), Family Division (Fam) and Queen’s Bench Division (QBD). The Appeal Cases cover the Supreme Court (and previously covered the House of Lords), as well as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The reports named after the three divisions of the High Court cover not only cases heard in those divisions but also appeals arising from them which go to the Court of Appeal. (As we saw in Chapter 4, criminal appeals from the Queen’s Bench Division go straight to the Supreme Court, and are therefore reported in the Appeal Cases.) Additionally, the Incorporated Council publishes the Weekly Law Reports (WLR). This is a general series which, as its name implies, is published weekly, before being bound as three volumes for each year. Those cases which the editor considers to be least important appear in volume 1, while the rest appear in volumes 2 and 3. In due course, the cases from volumes 2 and 3 appear again in the Appeal Cases, Chancery, Family and Queen’s Bench series, where they benefit from the inclusion of outlines of the advocates’ arguments.

The Incorporated Council’s three specialist series are the Industrial Cases Reports (ICR) which contain only cases involving employment law, the Business Law Reports (Bus LR) which cover a wide range of topics such as banking law and intellectual property law under the broad heading of business law and the Public and Third Sector Law Reports (PTSR) which cover a diverse array of matters of interest to charity and public service lawyers.

As well as the law reports published by the Incorporated Council, there are many commercially published series of law reports. The commercially published series you are most likely to encounter is the All England Law Reports (All ER) which was traditionally a general series appearing in weekly parts, before being bound as four volumes for each year. (Unlike the Weekly Law Reports, no significance attaches to the placing of a case in any particular volume.) After many years as an entirely general series, the All England Law Reports embarked on a modest programme of diversification which has produced two sub-series. These cover European Community cases and commercial law cases, and are cited as All ER (EC) and All ER (Comm) respectively. However, most of the commercially published series of law reports are whole-heartedly specialist, with many covering quite small areas of law, such as Housing Law Reports (HLR) and Road Traffic Reports (RTR).

The headnotes in some law reports refer you to other relevant sources of law. The leading series of law reports which contains this kind of material is the All England Law Reports, which give any relevant references to other works published by the same company, principally Halsbury’s Laws of England and Halsbury’s Statutes of England.

The headnotes in most series of law reports do not contain summaries of the advocates’ arguments, but the principal series of the Incorporated Council for Law Reporting for England and Wales (namely the Appeal Cases (AC), Chancery Division (Ch), Family Division (Fam) and Queen’s Bench Division (QB) reports) do so. (See p. 85 for the contents of each of these series.) Summaries of the advocates’ arguments do not appear in the other series published by the Incorporated Council, namely the Weekly Law Reports (WLR), the Industrial Cases Reports (ICR) and the Business Law Reports (Bus LR), nor in the commercially published full-transcript law reports (the leading example of which is the All England Law Reports (All ER)), nor in any of the series of short reports.

The fact that most series of law reports do not include summaries of the advocates’ arguments may be taken as an indication that they are less than essential. However, you may find them useful if you are mooting (and especially if you know that you are likely to lose on a point of law), because they may suggest lines of argument that you could adopt and, where necessary, adapt. If this tactic succeeds, you will at least have arguments of truly professional quality, which may help you to succeed as the best mooter. You will also find that moot judges will intervene at least once in respect of each advocate, as a means of testing each individual’s ability to deviate from a set script. (Mooting is dealt with in more detail at pp. 235–241.)

The headnotes in some series of law reports list the cases cited in the judgment, together with a separate list of those cited in argument by the advocates but not referred to in the judgments. These case lists have two purposes.

First, they provide a research list of cases on similar subject matter which may lead you to more appropriate authorities for a legal problem or issue which you need to solve. However, the availability of electronic databases has reduced the importance of case lists for this purpose.

Secondly, knowing which of the cases that do not appear in the judgment were nonetheless cited to the court can be particularly useful if you already have a detailed knowledge of the relevant area of law and you are surprised to see that a particular case is not mentioned in the judgment. Knowing the case was cited in argument means that you can reasonably assume that the court considered the case to be irrelevant. If, on the other hand, you know that a case was not cited in argument (or if you do not know whether it was cited in argument) you may have an uneasy suspicion that the ensuing decision may not be of the highest quality.

You will find a list of some of the most common abbreviations for series of law reports (together with abbreviations of the titles of many journals) in Appendix 2, but a more comprehensive index of abbreviations, which can be searched by abbreviation or title, is maintained by the University of Cardiff. It is available at www.legalabbrevs.cardiff.ac.uk.

Full transcript and short reports

It is important to notice the distinction between full transcript and short reports. Full transcript reports, such as the All England Law Reports, together with all the series published by the Incorporated Council for Law Reporting and many other series, consist of the full transcripts of the courts’ judgments, together with a headnote. We shall return to a more detailed analysis of full transcript law reports in Chapter 8, where we explain how to read a law report, but for the moment it is sufficient to comment briefly on the nature and status of headnotes.

The most important part of the headnote is the law reporter’s summary of the case. However, it is essential to notice that, while headnotes are generally accurate, they are only an individual’s summary and have no legal status whatsoever. It follows that you rely on them at your peril. The headnotes of some series of full transcript law reports contain only the law reporter’s summary, but others contain a variety of other material, such as outlines of the advocates’ arguments, including lists of the cases on which the arguments were based, in argument and in the judgment, together with references to extraneous material which the law reporter thinks may be relevant. The summary part of a headnote can take one of three forms.

First, it may be fully propositional, consisting only of the reporter’s version of the proposition (or propositions) of law which the court formulated in order to dispose of the case, without any attempt to summarise the facts.

Secondly, it may be fully narrative, which means it tells the story of what happened (thus providing a statement of the relevant facts), before stating the court’s ruling as to the relevant law, and then, finally, applying the law to the facts, in order to produce a decision. (The headnote to the report of Henthorn v Fraser [1892] 2 Ch 27 (CA), which we will analyse in Chapter 8, takes this form.)

Thirdly, it may be a compromise between the first two styles, consisting of a brief statement of context, followed by a statement of law on which the decision was based. A headnote of this kind would read something like:

In a dispute as to whether a contractual offer can be revoked after an acceptance has been posted but before it has been received, the court held …

This style of headnote may be called semi-propositional.

Unlike a full transcript report, a short report consists only of the reporter’s summary. Again, these are generally accurate, but without the full transcript immediately to hand, you have no easy way of checking whether this is so in individual cases; and, in any event, no summary can ever do justice to all the subtleties of the full judgment. It follows that, as with the headnotes to full transcript reports, you rely on short reports at your peril. However, some short reports (for example, those which appear in the Criminal Law Review) do have the advantage that they are accompanied by commentaries which criticise the decisions, or assess their significance, or both. These commentaries are particularly useful in relation to recent decisions, which are unlikely to be discussed in the current edition of the textbook you have been advised to buy.