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Why Print Reporters are Still Relevant

By Chris Dykes
Recently, I received a faculty request to locate the old Copyright Rules of Practice that were issued in 1909, and after various amendments were abrogated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001. I was provided with the following citations to the U.S. Reports:

214 U.S. 533 (1909) - Copyright Practice rules handed down based on the 1909 act
307 U.S. 652 (1939) - Amendments made by Supreme Court
383 U.S. 1031 (1966) - Amendments to Rules of Civil Procedure

The U.S. Reports is the official reporter for Supreme Court cases along with memorandum decisions, various amicus briefs and rules issued by the court.

I entered the citations on Lexis and Westlaw, and was not able to retrieve the rules but instead found memorandum decisions. I used these citations to locate the Copyright Rules of Practice in the print reporters of the United States Reports and successfully obtained them. While Westlaw and LexisNexis recognize "U.S." citations to cases and memorandum decisions, they do not recognize them for the rules that are published in the U.S. Reports.
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  1. dginsbergFebruary 10, 2010 at 5:18 PM

    This is one of the frustrating limitations of Wexis - they don't have all of the text of the official US Reports. However, Hein Online does have these rules and you can find them by citation. Hein is always a great place to look for official documetns - particularly for those of us too lazy to walk to the official reporters.

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