American Law Reports
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In American law, the American Law Reports are a resource used by American lawyers to find a variety of sources relating to specific legal rules, doctrines, or principles. It is an important tool for legal research.
Each ALR volume contains several annotations. An annotation is an article that summarizes the evolution of a very specific legal concept in a concise and precise fashion. The article will either be preceded by the full text of an important relevant case, or in later series, contain a reference to the text of the case, which is reproduced at the end of the volume.
The article will contain a wide variety of relevant citations to cases from throughout the United States and secondary sources like law review articles. The range and number of citations is always strongly representative but not always guaranteed to be completely comprehensive.
Although similar in tone to the articles in legal encyclopedias, ALR annotations are different in that they are not organized alphabetically, and they tend to drill more deeply into a specific legal principle or doctrine, while, in contrast, encyclopedia articles aim for the big picture. In addition, ALR articles are careful to provide cases on both sides of the legal issue and provide listings of cases according to the jurisdiction. Since articles are published in the order the leading cases were decided, there are various finding aids, such as the ALR Index,[1] and West's ALR Digest[2] (which now follows the classification system of the West American Digest System) to help one find an annotation on a particular topic, or the reader may use the references in American Jurisprudence to a find a more in-depth discussion in ALR. ALR articles may also be searched on Westlaw.
ALR has been published in several series (the current series is ALR6th) and there are series of ALR Fed (which focuses on federal law). ALR3d through ALR6th and ALR Fed are updated by pocket part supplements (the first series has a citation service, and ALR2d a Later Case Service). Annotations may be superseded by a later annotation in which the editor reanalyzes the law in light of recent developments.
