Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States is the official charged with editing and publishing the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, both when announced and when they are published in permanent bound volumes of the United States Reports. The Reporter of Decisions is responsible for only the contents of the United States Reports issued by the Government Printing Office, first in preliminary prints and later in the final bound volumes. The Reporter is not responsible for the editorial content of unofficial reports of the Court's decisions, such as the privately published Supreme Court Reporter and Lawyers' Edition.

The Reporter of Decisions is appointed by the Supreme Court.

History

The first two reporters acted in an unofficial capacity. Only in 1816, after the Supreme Court had existed for a quarter-century, did Congress create an official post of reporter. It then added a $1,000 a year salary in the Judiciary Act of 1817. The reporter also profited from selling the printed volumes of the reports of decisions. In 1874, Congress for the first time appropriated funds to publish the volumes of the court's opinions; from that time the report was known as the United States Reports and numbering began as if the first volume by the first reporter, Alexander J. Dallas, was number one. The Government Printing Office took over publication of the United States Reports in 1922.

The official title of this officer was changed from "Reporter" to "Reporter of Decisions" in 1953, to clarify the duties of the office at the request of Reporter Walter Wyatt with the authorization of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson.

List of Reporters

The reporters of decisions are listed here with their tenures and the volumes of the United States Reports they edited. Until volume 90, the volumes were also known by the name of the reporter and the numbers of those "nominative reports" are listed after the United States Reports numbers. The post was vacant from Ernest Knaebel's death in 1944 and until 1946, at which point his replacement Walter Wyatt was chosen. Wyatt retroactively edited the United States Reports for those years, making volumes 322 to 325.

#	Name	Term	Volumes edited
1	Alexander J. Dallas	1790–1800	1–4 (1–4 Dallas)
2	William Cranch	1801–1815	5–13 (1–9 Cranch)
3	Henry Wheaton	1816–1827	14–25 (1–12 Wheat.)
4	Richard Peters	1828–1842	26–41 (1–16 Pet.)
5	Benjamin Chew Howard	1843–1860	42–65 (1–24 How.)
6	Jeremiah Sullivan Black	1861–1862	66–67 (1–2 Black)
7	John William Wallace	1863–1874	68–90 (1–23 Wall.)
8	William Tod Otto	1875–1883	91–107
9	John Chandler Bancroft Davis	1883–1902	108–186
10	Charles Henry Butler	1902–1916	187–241
11	Ernest Knaebel	1916–1944	242–321
N/A	Office vacant	1944-1946	N/A (volumes 322–325 later edited by Wyatt)
12	Walter Wyatt	1946–1963	322–375
13	Henry Putzel Jr.	1964–1979	376–444
14	Henry Curtis Lind	1979–1987	440–479
15	Frank D. Wagner	1987–2010	480–561
16	Christine Luchok Fallon	2011–present	562

See also

• Court reporter
• Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume
• Reporter of decisions for similar offices in other countries
• United States Reports
• United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co.
• Wheaton v. Peters, a dispute between two reporters that reached the Supreme Court

External links

• History of the Federal Judiciary: Judicial Administration and Organization, Reporter of Decisions at the Federal Judicial Center.
• Reporters of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, Craig Joyce, University of Houston Law Center