6.2 Case Law Research: Reporters, Digests, Citators

Case-law research is a three-tool problem: reporters (where the opinion is printed), digests (how you find other opinions on the same point), and citators (whether the opinion is still good law). The PCCE will name those tools and expect you to know which job each one does. A digest is not a reporter. A headnote is not a holding. A yellow flag is not a synonym for “overruled.”

Official reports, unofficial reporters, and parallel citations

A reporter is a series of volumes that print judicial opinions. Official reports are published by or under the authority of the court or the jurisdiction. Unofficial reporters are commercial — principally Thomson Reuters West and, historically, Lawyers Cooperative, now associated with Lexis.

United States Supreme Court

• Official: United States Reports, cited as U.S.
• Unofficial: West’s Supreme Court Reporter, cited as S. Ct.; United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers’ Edition, cited as L. Ed. or L. Ed. 2d

The Court’s own syllabus at the front of a U.S. Reports opinion is a reporter’s summary. It is not the opinion. Cite pages of the opinion, not the syllabus, for the holding.

Federal lower courts have no official reporter comparable to United States Reports:

• Courts of appeals: West’s Federal Reporter — F., F.2d, F.3d, F.4th
• District courts: West’s Federal Supplement — F. Supp., F. Supp. 2d, F. Supp. 3d
• Related West series include Federal Rules Decisions (F.R.D.) for many procedure opinions, the Bankruptcy Reporter (B.R.), and the Federal Appendix (F. App’x) for many unpublished circuit opinions

State courts

• Many states still publish official state reports (for example, Cal., Cal. App., N.Y.2d). Some states have designated the West regional reporter as official. Know the concept; do not invent a requirement that every state still prints its own set.
• West’s National Reporter System covers the states in seven regional reporters: Atlantic (A.), North Eastern (N.E.), North Western (N.W.), Pacific (P.), South Eastern (S.E.), Southern (So.), and South Western (S.W.), each with second and often third series.

A parallel citation gives the same opinion in more than one reporter: Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1966). The Bluebook and the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation tables tell you when a local rule still wants the official cite. On the PCCE, recognize that parallel cites are the same case, not three cases, and that a regional cite such as 998 S.W.3d 12 is a state-court opinion, not a Fifth Circuit opinion.

Slip opinions (the court’s first release) and electronic “advance” versions precede bound volumes. If you must cite before the official pagination exists, follow the jurisdiction’s rule on star pagination or the vendor’s pagination — and update the cite when the bound reporter appears.

Headnotes and the West Key Number / digest system

A headnote is a short editorial summary of one legal point in the opinion. West editors write West headnotes. They are research tools. They are not the opinion and they are not citable as the court’s holding. If a headnote overstates the case, and you cite the headnote instead of the page of the opinion, you have mis-cited the law. Some official reporters also print a syllabus; the same warning applies.

West assigns every headnote a topic and a Key Number (for example, Contracts 15 or Limitation of Actions 55). The same topic and Key Number classify the same point of law in every West reporter in the system. That is how you go from one known case to other cases on the same issue, including cases in other states and in the federal system.

A digest is the print (and now database) index built on those topics and Key Numbers. The American Digest System and the Decennial Digests try to cover the country. There are also federal digests, regional digests, and state digests. In print you use the descriptive-word index, go to the topic and Key Number, read the squib paragraphs, and pull the cases that actually match your facts. Online, a Key Number search or “cases that cite this headnote” does the same work faster.

Other ways to expand a known case:

1. Read the opinion’s discussion of prior cases and pull those citations
2. Run a citator and filter citing decisions to your jurisdiction and your headnote
3. Use an American Law Reports (ALR) annotation that lists the case
4. Search the statute’s notes of decision if the case construes a code section

Do not confuse a digest with a reporter. A digest tells you where cases on a point live. It does not replace the opinion. Do not confuse a headnote with a holding. The holding is the rule the court actually applied to the material facts. Everything else in the opinion may be useful reasoning or may be dictum.

Citators: Shepard’s and KeyCite

A citator answers two questions: What has happened to this authority (direct history)? What later authorities have cited it (treatment and citing references)?

• Shepard’s Citations is the Lexis product. The verb is to Shepardize.
• KeyCite is the Westlaw product. The verb is to KeyCite.

Both flag direct history (affirmed, reversed, vacated, superseded by statute, certiorari denied) and citing treatment (followed, distinguished, criticized, questioned, overruled on other grounds). Visual signals are tested:

• A red flag or stop signal means the authority is no longer good law for at least one point — overruled, reversed, or superseded on that point
• A yellow flag or caution signal means some negative treatment — distinguished, criticized, limited — but the case is not dead for every proposition
• Words such as overruled, questioned, and distinguished are not synonyms. Overruled means a higher court, or a later decision of the same court, killed the rule. Questioned means a later court doubted it without killing it. Distinguished means a later court left the rule standing but said the facts were different

Never treat a green or “cited” signal as a substitute for reading. A case can be followed fifty times on issue A and overruled on issue B. Filter to the headnote that matches your issue and read the negative history. Certiorari denied is not an affirmance on the merits; it is a refusal to hear the case.

Statutes and regulations have citators too. Shepard’s and KeyCite will show amending public laws, repeals, and cases that hold a section unconstitutional. Updating only the cases and ignoring the statute they construe is half a job.

The non-negotiable rule

Never cite a case without updating it. An opinion that was perfect in last year’s memo may have been reversed last Tuesday. Updating is not optional because the attorney is in a hurry, because the case is famous, or because you found it in a treatise. Famous cases get limited. Treatises lag. The citator is the last stop before the cite goes into a brief.

In print, Shepard’s required the bound Shepard’s volume plus every later supplement and advance sheet. Online, the analog is running Shepard’s or KeyCite on the current database and opening the history. Skipping the pocket-part equivalent online is the same malpractice pattern as skipping it in the library.

Worked path

You already have Smith v. Jones, a 2019 state intermediate opinion on duty of care. Open the West version. Identify the duty headnote and its Key Number. Run that Key Number in the state digest (or a Key Number search limited to your state and your court level). Pull three newer cases. Shepardize or KeyCite Smith and each new case. If Smith now carries a red flag because the state supreme court rejected its duty analysis, do not put Smith in the brief as the rule. Put the supreme court case in, and use Smith only if it still lives on a different point and you say so. If a later court merely distinguished Smith on facts you do not have, the yellow signal may leave Smith usable — after you read that later opinion, not after you glance at the icon.