law reporting

law reporting. The first published reports of cases heard in Irish law courts and of decisions made by the judges are those contained in Sir John Davies's Reports, published in 1615. Davies was attorney‐general and a participant in most of the cases (of the period 1604–11) which he reported. Over one‐and‐a‐half centuries were to elapse before the publication of the next significant collection of Irish reports (covering the years 1786–8) by G. W. Vernon and J. B. Scriven in 1790. During the intervening period some collections of reports circulated in manuscript, but only individual reports (such as the Case of Tenures published in 1637), or small groups of reports (such as the ten Irish equity cases reported by Gilbert and published in 1734), found their way into print. After 1790 law reporting was erratic and variable in quality, as there was no real attempt to supervise the quality of published reports. The era of the ‘official’ law report began with the establishment of the Irish Law Reporting Council in 1867 and its publication of an official series of annual Law Reports.

Paul Brand