Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/482

Rh their "Reporters." I regret to say that our friends the "Co-ops," whose reporting is usually so well done, adhere to a double column of small type not leaded. Their reports are the most difficult to read of any that come to me, if we except that of the new venture, the "Railway and Corporation Law Journal," which is printed in very much the same type and in very much the same style.

Before passing to defects which are remediable by the reporters and editors, I venture to allude to one which is to be laid at the door of the judges. Many judges in their judicial opinions allude to the parties as "appellant" and "appellee," or "appellant" and "respondent," or "plaintiff in error" and "defendant in error." Where the old common-law barbarism is adhered to (as in Illinois and Tennessee), of turning the parties upside down whenever the defendant prosecutes the writ of error, or prosecutes a statutory appeal at law in the nature of a writ of error,—and indeed in all cases,—this practice is very confusing and perplexing. It prevents the reader of a judicial opinion from keeping easily in his mind a mirror of the attitude of the parties as they stood in the court below. It is to be remembered that the opinion in every case is treating of what took place in the court below; and in order to convey to the mind of the reader a clear image of what took place there, the parties ought to be designated in the opinion of the appellate court as plaintiff and defendant, precisely as they were designated in the court below. I have been very much vexed recently in reading the opinions of the Supreme Court of Illinois, by having to turn back, every once in a while, to the heading to find which party was the appellant and which the appellee. This practice on the part of the writers of judicial opinions is inexcusable and abominable.

Coming now to defects which are remediable by the reporters, the first abomination of many of the reports is the want of catch-words or head-lines indicating the subject of each paragraph of the syllabus. A person, skilled in making these catch-words or head-lines, can, in a line which will scarcely extend more than across the page, convey to the searcher a quick idea of the subject of each paragraph. Every person who makes extensive use of the books of judicial reports knows how great is the value of this to the searcher. I desire to call special attention to the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States, whose reporter is probably the best-paid reporter in the country, allows him to keep up the old style. In this regard the unofficial series called the "Supreme Court Reporter," published by the Wests, of St. Paul, is a better series of reports than the official series.

Again, some of the reporters who endeavor to make catch-words to their propositions do it in such a clumsy way that they might almost as well have left it undone. This duty is not skilfully discharged where three or four words are thrown together in succession with dashes between them; such as, "fraudulent conveyance—assignment for creditors—priorities—." A skilful editor can, in one line, generally index each paragraph in the head-note so as to convey to the searcher an idea in outline of the nature of the propositions decided. I have not space to deliver a lecture upon how this may be done, and there are some editors into whose heads it never could be beaten; but I venture to say that the head-lines of the "Weekly Digest of Recent Cases," published in the "Central Law Journal" in the year 1885, are good examples of what may be done in this direction. In this regard, the reports of the Supreme Court of Iowa have, I conceive, always been the best models. The use of these catch-words and head-lines by the Wests, of St. Paul, in their series of "Reporters," now covering all the courts in the Union, is also to be much commended. The attempt to supply this want by printing in bold-face type certain emphatic words in the body of each para-