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Duke Law

Legal Profession

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Full-Text Articles in Law

More Than Decisions: Reviews Of American Law Reports In The Pre-West Era, Richard A. Danner Jan 2015

More Than Decisions: Reviews Of American Law Reports In The Pre-West Era, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

In the early nineteenth century, both general literary periodicals and the first American legal journals often featured reviews of new volumes of U.S. Supreme Court and state court opinions, suggesting their importance not only to lawyers seeking the latest cases, but to members of the public. The reviews contributed to public discourse through comments on issues raised in the cases and the quality of the reporting, and were valued as forums for commentary on the law and its role in American society, particularly during debates on codification and the future of the common law in the 1820s. James Kent saw …


The Aba, The Aall, The Aals, And The “Duplication Of Legal Publications”, Richard A. Danner Jan 2012

The Aba, The Aall, The Aals, And The “Duplication Of Legal Publications”, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

Between 1935 and 1940, the American Bar Association, the Association of American Law Schools, and the American Association of Law Libraries joined forces to work on solutions to a problem often referred to as the “duplication of legal publications.” The need for practicing attorneys and law libraries to purchase multiple and duplicative versions of published law reports and other law books was burdensome in costs, complicated the research process, and contributed to what the American Law Institute identified as the two chief defects of American law: “its uncertainty and its complexity.” This article highlights the efforts of the ABA, the …