Editing Common law (section)

=== Publication of decisions ===

In common law systems, precedents are maintained over time through court records and historically documented in collections of case law referred to as yearbooks and [[law report]]s.<ref name="Civil Law" />

After the [[American Revolution]] in 1776, Massachusetts became the first state to establish an official Reporter of Decisions. As newer states needed law, they often looked first to the Massachusetts Reports for authoritative precedents as a basis for their own common law.<ref name="BostonSocialLawCommonOrCivil">Social Law Library, ''Common Law or Civil Code?'', Boston, Massachusetts.</ref> The United States federal courts relied on private publishers until after the Civil War, and only began publishing as a government function [[United States Reports#history|in 1874]]. [[West (publisher)|West Publishing in Minnesota]] is the largest private-sector publisher of law reports in the United States. Government publishers typically issue only decisions "in the raw", while private sector publishers often add indexing, including references to the key principles of the common law involved, editorial analysis, and similar finding aids.