Publication of the Reports

In 1803, a statute (St. 1803, c. 133, § 1) provided for the office of Reporter of Decisions. The first Reporter was not appointed until 1804 and he reported the decisions found in volume one of the Massachusetts Reports during September term, 1804. The Preface to the First Edition of Volume 1 of the Massachusetts Reports describes duties of the Reporter that required travel with the Justices from county to county, the court "ordinarily having but one week for holding a term in each county." Much time was spent seeking materials that would support an accurate reporting of the cases being heard.

Today, in the age of information, there are slip opinions in printed and electronic formats, weekly printed and electronic advance sheets, CD-Roms, and internet access. While many of the editorial and writing skills required to report the court's opinions are as important today as they were in 1804, the process of disseminating the court's opinions has changed dramatically. The following paragraphs will outline the operations of the modern Reporter's office.

The office provides editorial support for the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) and the Appeals Court and administers a printing contract for the publication of the advance sheets and permanent bound volumes of the official reports of the two Massachusetts appellate courts. The Reporter's statutory duties are outlined in G. L. c. 221, §§ 63-68.

The staff of the Reporter's office works with the Justices, their law clerks, and the judicial secretaries to produce the slip opinions. Prior to the Justices' monthly consultation, a paralegal editor edits a draft opinion. This editing will involve a checking of all facts stated in the opinion against the record appendix or transcripts, checking of citations and further appellate history, conforming the opinion to the conventions of the official style manual, and checking grammar and syntax. When this work is completed, the draft opinion is returned to the law clerk or judicial secretary. The opinion will then proceed to consultation.

After consultation, the opinion is transmitted electronically to the Reporter's office. A paralegal and editorial assistant gather briefs and record-appendices, verify the panel hearing the case, check the county of origin, argument date, and other preliminary matters. This material appears in the Forecourt Docketing System and the staff runs a number of WordPerfect macros in order to transfer this material to the form needed for publication.

The work of the three attorneys in the Reporter's office entails editing approximately 500 full opinions annually, preparing headnotes for these cases, and proofreading page proofs for the advance sheets and bound volumes. Each opinion will be read by the Reporter, Deputy Reporter, or Assistant Reporter. This reading focuses on style and substance. Any suggestions of a substantive nature will be brought to the attention of the Justice. This reading results in the assigning of so-called "catchwords" to identify the various issues discussed, the drafting of a procedural history that outlines how the case has come to the appellate court, and a verification of appellate counsel.

An important responsibility of the Reporter is to prepare the synopsis of each issue decided in a case (headnotes) that accompanies the report of each case. These headnotes do not appear in the slip opinions, but do appear in the advance sheets and bound volumes. The fifteenth Reporter of Decisions, Grant M. Palmer, Jr., expressed these thoughts about headnoting opinions in the Massachusetts Reports (Memorandum to SJC Staff, 1971):

"Brevity and conciseness are a prime consideration. When the relevant facts are many and perhaps complicated, e.g., in a negligence case, it is often possible to summarize the facts fairly briefly in such a way as to give the reader a clear idea of the situation involved. However, it must be recognized that there are certain kinds of cases where a somewhat lengthy headnote cannot be avoided if the point is to be made clear, e.g., where the decision turns on the meaning of particular language of a provision of a will or contract -- often long. With rare exceptions, each headnote is one sentence; this is conducive to brevity.

"Ordinarily, each headnote will cover only one point of law, and will state only the facts relevant to that point. This kind of headnote is believed to be the most helpful to the reader, and has been used for many years. An exception to this rule may be made where the facts, or the terms of a statute, or other factors are relevant to two or more points of law; in such a situation it may be better, in order to avoid repetition, to write one headnote, inserting a bracket for the opinion page number or numbers after each point.

"Certain well settled rules of law which are often stated in passing in opinions are ordinarily not headnoted as such, although of course they may be involved in the headnotes which are written.

"'Signboard' headnotes (so called by former Reporter E.V. Grabill) . . . are used in instances where there is a fairly extended discussion or statement of a point of law or review of authorities pertaining thereto. The headnote to cover this material would be a short one reading thus: 'Discussion [or Statement] of [or Review of authorities pertaining to]" the legal point in question. Usually, of course, the point would also be involved in another headnote dealing with the pertinent facts and procedure.

"In a majority of instances, probably, a dissent or concurrence is indicated at the end of a headnote merely by the name or names of the judge or judges followed by the word 'dissenting' or 'concurring,' both in regular and advisory opinions. As will appear from these references, the dissent or concurrence is frequently to only one or some of the points in the case; in such instances the headnote writer must be careful to fit the dissent or concurrence to the right headnote or headnotes -- not always an easy decision. Not infrequently, more than an indication that a judge or judges dissented or concurred is advisable for the sake of clarity.

"[M]uch must be left to the discretion of the headnote writer, bearing in mind that the main purpose of headnotes is not to relieve the reader of the necessity of reading the opinion, but to get across to [the reader] quickly and clearly the salient points of the opinion so that [the reader] can then examine it for those in which [the reader] is interested."

Copies of the slip opinion are released to the public in printed form at 10:00 AM and through our website before 10:30 AM. The Reporter also makes distribution to a number of trial courts, government offices, and private entities.

The publishing week begins on Thursday and ends on Wednesday. The cut-off date for material to be published in a given week is Wednesday at 2 PM. All cases released through Wednesday of a given week will be mailed to the subscribers by the printing contractor in advance sheet form on Friday. The advance sheet service provided by the Reporter's office in Massachusetts is the most timely printed advance sheet service in the United States.

Preparation of the decisions to be published in advance sheet form, along with periodic tables of cases and indices, has been automated. In summary, computer macros have been devised and are run to strip out all WordPerfect codes and to replace them with Standardized General Mark-up Language (SGML) that is read by the printing contractor's computer. By automating this procedure, labor costs have been cut and accuracy increased. Once all material to be published has been "tagged" with SGML, the material is run through a parser (software) to find any tagging errors. When the material has "parsed cleanly" it is transmitted through proprietary software to the printer. If it has not parsed cleanly a macro is run to find the location of the error and the error is then be manually corrected.

Each Wednesday afternoon and evening the printing contractor composes the pages for the advance sheets, prepares PDF files, and emails the final pages to the Reporter. Each of these pages is proofread on Thursday and facsimile copies of each corrected page are sent to the printer. The corrections are made by the printer and the corrected pages are returned to the Reporter for approval.

All advance sheet pages are carefully proofread again before the bound volume is produced. Any bound volume changes that have been sent to the Reporter are inserted in the bound volume page proofs. The printer mails bound volumes to the subscribers and maintains an inventory of past bound volumes.

The Reporter's office continues its efforts to standardize its editing conventions and office practices. The editorial Style Manual, which has been in use for several years, is continually evaluated and updated and may be downloaded from this website.

The manual includes general rules of SJC writing style, tables of abbreviations, guidelines for case citation, and rules of capitalization and punctuation followed in preparing the official reports. There are sections explaining the method of forming case captions and party designations. Examples of common statements of dispository language, referred to as "snappers," are provided. Also, a number of standards of review used by the court are set out.