Digests and American Law Reports

Digests and American Law Reports

Introduction

An ALR annotation is usually easier to use than a digest. Digests consist simply of case abstracts, with no explanation text, so the reader must often wade through many irrelevant or no pertinent results before to find the relevant one. Digests usually do not indicate that a court decision is no longer valid, unless it has been directly reversed and modified. With digests, it is necesary to locate and review the Legal opinions themselves in order to find those which are relevant, and after to verify their status through other tools or methods.

Digests

Digests compile or reprint (or republish, in an online environment) in a subject arrangement (usually in alphabetical order, but according to the branches or areas of law) the main points of law or headnotes from Court Reports .

See U.S. Digests and American Digest System for more information.

American Law Reports (ALR)

The ALR offers researchers Annotations (articles) on a narrow point of law. The ALR is not a reporter in the sense that it collects the text of reported cases in a given jurisdiction.

Typical Annotations start with the text of an entire appellate case and are followed by a discussion of the legal trend or doctrine that that case represents. These annotations also comment on related decisions from all jurisdictions on the points of law raised by the representative case. A Table of Jurisdictions directs the researcher to cases within specific states. A relevant annotation will also provide the researcher with prevailing policy arguments and legal doctrine for the issue covered in the annotation.
Additionally, a relevant annotation will provide the researcher with citations to cases, statutes, law reviews, and other ALR annotations. These citations typically found in an ALR annotation offer a useful starting point for research on narrow points of law.

Updated commentary and case comments are found in the pocket parts.

Conclusion

Notes

See Also

About the Author/s and Rewiever/s

Author: international

References and Further Reading

About the Author/s and Reviewer/s

Author: international

Mentioned in these Entries

American Digest System, American Law Reports (ALR), American Legal Systems: A Resource and Reference Guide, Annotations, Court Reports, Key Number System, Legal opinions, Selective Publication of Cases, U.S. Digests.


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