the reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States, growing out of the number of times he has compelled me to turn over his volumes and look at the back to recall the volume from which I was reading and which I desired to cite. I have several times called attention to this defect in reporting, in the Ameriean Law Review, and with the result that the English reporters have now adopted the suggestion universally, and that several of the American state reporters have adopted it; while other reporters, including, I am sorry to say, the reporter of the Su preme Court of the United States, stick to the beggarly old system of allowing the person using their books, to turn them over and look at the back every time they cite them, and then to find them numbered in Roman numerals. Many errors of citation are due to the failure to designate the volume in the head-lines of the pages. VIII. Head-l1n1ng the Head-Notes.— Every head-note ought to have a head-line indicating the subject of it. Where there are half a dozen or more head-notes, to throw a lot of catch-words together in a mass preceding all the head-notes, is a wretched and inexcusable style. The searcher, whose time is limited and who must proceed rapid ly, must sometimes read portions of most of the head-notes before he comes to the one which embodies the proposition which he wishes to examine. IX. Number1ng the Head-Notes and Indent1ng the Numbers 1n the Op1n1on. — The practice of numbering the head-notes and of indenting corresponding numbers into the text of the opinion, as is done in the Iowa Reports, is very much to be com mended. In every case where more than one point is decided, it saves the time of the searcher in finding the point he wants, and it is especially valuable in long and com plicated opinions. It is an example which could well be suggested to the reporter of
the Supreme Court of the United States. It should be added that no reprint of a se ries of reports can be regarded as properly edited where this time-saving device is omitted. X. Correct1ng the Grammar of the Judges. — Judges are often so overburdened with work that they find themselves in an almost comatose state; in this condition the judge, in writing his opinions, will often make bad slips of grammar, to say nothing of clumsy rhetoric. He will be obliged to the re porter for correcting any obvious grammati cal or rhetorical misprision. For corrections of this nature Kent was under obligations to Johnson, and Story to Sumner. A blun der made by the best writers, and one which it is difficult to avoid altogether in our imper fect language, is the using of a singular verb with a double nominative. A judge will always be grateful to a reporter, and even to a proof-reader, for correcting an error of this kind. Again, there have been judges of consider able reputation who never mastered English composition, and were never able to express their ideas in clear grammatical English. Such judges have even been found on the Supreme Bench of the United States. As belonging to this class, I happen to think at the present time of Catron, Woodbury, and of Davis. Woodbury's grammar and rheto ric were so bad — so bungling — that I am unwilling to believe that he had any very clear legal ideas; for a man who has clear ideas can generally express them clearly. Catron's opinions — not corrected by the reporter, who seems to have been as slovenly as the judge, — are disfigured by many faults of expression, some of which a capa ble proof-reader would have ventured to correct. Davis often expressed his ideas obscurely, and then, when he came to cor rect the proofs of his opinions for the official reports, he would change the language, even in substance, thus making an unwarrantable
