date

4 July 1805 Introd. Jurisprudential
4 July 1805

Introd. Jurisprudential

Ch. II. Sources

''. 3. Reports

Printed memorials, called Reports: containing accounts of Judicial Decisions together with the Judicial Dicta to which they gave rise.

Hitherto, decisions and dicta have been considered only in the abstract: it remains to speak of the physical bodies the printed books, in which the written signs of these discourses are exhibited in a material and concrete form.

A lawyer who happens to be present in court while the arguments on behalf of the parties for and against the decision called for by the plaintiff's demand, and the arguments of the Judge or Judges in support of the decision they are about to pronounce are delivering taken what is called for his notes of the case: that is sets down certain words as containing the tenor or at least the /at any rate/ purport of the whole or a part of which on the occasion in question is /was/ said by such or such a Judge, more particularly, of several Judges by the presiding Judge: with or without the arguments of the Advocates as he thinks fit! This note, when printed and published is called a Report: and a book containing a collection of such notes a Book of Reports.

In any such Report will of course be contained an account more or less explicit /clear/ and copious of the particular decision, and of the general dicta, direct and collateral, decisive and argumentative, on which it was grounded.
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    Of a general proposition, delivered from a set of particular ones, this much may easily be conceived in a general way, that it may be of any given extent. It may be so short and narrow as to be capable of holding not even those the two particular propositions containing the least quantity of matter which it is possible for it to hold. viz: the anterior decision and the proposed future decision for the warranting of which it is framed. It may on the other hand be ample: and that to any degree of amplitude which the judge find it agreeable or convenient to give to it.

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