Despite the Philippines` long civil law tradition, recourse to precedent has become indispensable since U.S. rule. Supreme Court decisions are explicitly recognised as part of national law and are therefore frequently cited in court decisions and pleadings. Although there is only one Supreme Court in the Philippines, the citation of its decisions varies depending on the reporter of a case who relies on the person citing that case. Halsbury`s Laws of India on LexisNexis Advance (UniMelb staff & student access) is a comprehensive online encyclopedia of law in India, listed alphabetically by subject. It contains comments and cites relevant legislation and important cases. The abbreviations of lower courts vary from state to state, as each state has its own system of trial courts and intermediate courts of appeal. If a case appears in both an official journalist and a regional journalist, both quotes can be used. In general, it is preferable to quote the regional journalist, as out-of-state lawyers are more likely to have access. Many lawyers prefer to include both quotes. Some state courts require parallel citations (in this case, quoting both the official reporter and an unofficial regional journalist) to be used when cases are cited by a court in that state`s system.

[ref. needed] Some very old Supreme Court cases have strange quotes, such as Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Ranch) 137 (1803). The “(1 Cranch)” refers to the fact that before there was a series of journalists known as United States Reports compiled by the Supreme Court decision reporter, cases were collected, linked and sold privately by the reporter of the Court`s decisions. In this example, Marbury is first mentioned in an edition of William Cranch, responsible for publishing Supreme Court reports from 1801 to 1815. These reports, named after the person who collected them and therefore called “nominative reports”, existed from 1790 to 1874. Beginning in 1874, the U.S. government produced the United States Reports and simultaneously numbered volumes that had previously been privately published as part of a single series, and began numbering consecutively.

In this way, “5 U.S. (1 Trench)” means that it is the 5th U.S. Complete volume of the United States Reports series, but the first originally published by William Cranch; four volumes of statements were published (e.g., by Alexander Dallas (e.g., “4 U.S. (4 Dall.)”), and after the 9 volumes of Cranch, another 12 were published by Henry Wheaton (e.g., “15 U.S. (2 Wheat.)”). See Supreme Court of the United States Reporter of Decisions for other publishing names. The name of the rapporteur of the decisions has not been used in the citations since the U.S. government began printing the U.S. reports. There are two types of citations: proprietary citations and public domain citations. There are many citation instructions; The most widely recognized is The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, compiled by Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Yale Law Journal.

Public domain citations refer to official journalists and not to a publishing service such as Westlaw, LexisNexis, some legal journals or specialized journalists. States with their own unique style for court documents and case evaluations also publish their own style guidelines, which include information about their citation rules. [ref. needed] If statements from the lower federal court are quoted, the summons contains the name of the court. This is placed in parentheses immediately before the year. Some examples: When citing cases not yet reported in the reports of the SCRA or the Philippines, preference is given to the above citation without reference to the SCRA (e.g., Fortich v. Corona, G.R. No. 131457, April 24, 1988) In addition to official journalists, Thomson West publishes several series of “regional reporters,” each covering several states.

They are the North Eastern Reporter, the Atlantic Reporter, the South Eastern Reporter, the Southern Reporter, the South Western Reporter, the North Western Reporter and the Pacific Reporter. California, Illinois and New York also each have their own group of Thomson West journalists, due to the large number of cases generated in these states (respectively titled West`s California Reporter, Illinois Decisions and West`s New York Supplement). Some small states (such as South Dakota) have stopped publishing their own official journalists and instead certified the corresponding Western Regional Reporter as their “official” reporter.