Why not just read headnotes rather than full reports?

As we have just seen, a headnote contains formal details, such as the date or dates of the hearing and the names of the advocates, as well as the reporter’s summary of the decision.

Looking at the matter in more detail, there are two reasons why you should not rely unquestioningly on the summary part of a headnote as a substitute for reading the decision itself.

First, no matter how long and detailed it may appear to be, a headnote can only be a summary; and, therefore (although the standard of modern law reporting is almost uniformly very high), there is always the possibility that accuracy may have been sacrificed to brevity. (It is for this reason that some – but only a very few – purists insist on never reading the summary section of a headnote, preferring to decide for themselves exactly what a case is about and what it decides, rather than having their perception of these matters clouded by reading the reporter’s version.)

Secondly, becoming a successful law student requires you to develop the skills of legal analysis and expression. One of the best ways of developing these skills is to undertake extensive reading of how the judges themselves analyse cases and express the results of their analyses, because this helps you to develop your sensitivity to the way in which judges function. Of course, having read a law report, it is only natural that you should write your own note, as an aid to remind you of what you have just learned, and this note will also be no more than a relatively brief summary. However, you will be using this note as a reminder of the understanding which you gained at the time, and you are very unlikely to have gained full understanding of a judgment which you have not read.

Nevertheless, it must be conceded that the advice given here is a counsel of perfection, and that many students do – at least from time to time – rely on headnotes. It must also be conceded that although using headnotes in this way – even in conjunction with your lecture notes and any other teaching materials you have been given – is bad practice, it is nevertheless preferable to never opening a law report at all. In short, therefore, it is up to you to decide whether you want to take the easy way out and, with luck, become a more or less adequate law student, or whether you want to become a good law student, in which case there is no alternative to doing things properly.

Returning specifically to Henthorn v Fraser, a minor inaccuracy may be found in the first line of the reporter’s summary (p. 131), where reference is made to a ‘land society’. Further study of the case shows that the body in question was, in fact, a ‘building society’. While it seems that nothing turned on the precise nature of the prospective seller of the property in question, if you referred to a ‘land society’ when writing an essay, you would (without realising it) be betraying the very limited extent of your reading – which is not the best thing to communicate to anyone who is marking your work.