The Judges in their reasonings have always been used to observe on the arguments employed by the counsel on either side, and on the authorities cited by them,—­assigning the grounds for rejecting the authorities which they reject, or for adopting those to which they adhere, or for a different construction of law, according to the occasion.  This publicity, not only of decision, but of deliberation, is not confined to their several courts, whether of law or equity, whether above or at Nisi Prius; but it prevails where they are assembled, in the Exchequer Chamber, or at Serjeants’ Inn, or wherever matters come before the Judges collectively for consultation and revision.  It seems to your Committee to be moulded in the essential frame and constitution of British judicature.  Your Committee conceives that the English jurisprudence has not any other sure foundation, nor, consequently, the lives and properties of the subject any sure hold, but in the maxims, rules, and principles, and juridical traditionary line of decisions contained in the notes taken, and from time to time published, (mostly under the sanction of the Judges,) called Reports.

In the early periods of the law it appears to your Committee that a course still better had been pursued, but grounded on the same principles; and that no other cause than the multiplicity of business prevented its continuance.  “Of ancient time,” says Lord Coke, “in cases of difficulties, either criminal or civil, the reasons and causes of the judgment were set down upon the record, and so continued in the reigns of Ed. I. and Ed. II., and then there was no need of reports; but in the reign of Ed. III. (when the law was in its height) the causes and reasons of judgments, in respect of the multitude of them, are not set down in the record, but then the great casuists and reporters of cases (certain grave and sad men) published the cases, and the reasons and causes of the judgments or resolutions, which, from the beginning of the reign of Ed. III. and since, we have in print.  But these also, though of great credit and excellent use in their kind, yet far underneath the authority of the Parliament Rolls, reporting the acts, judgments, and resolutions of that highest court."[29]

Reports, though of a kind less authentic than the Year Books, to which Coke alludes, have continued without interruption to the time in which we live.  It is well known that the elementary treatises of law, and the dogmatical treatises of English jurisprudence, whether they appear under the names of institutes, digests, or commentaries, do not rest on the authority of the supreme power, like the books called the Institute, Digest, Code, and authentic collations in the Roman law.  With us doctrinal books of that description have little or no authority, other than as they are supported by the adjudged cases and reasons given at one time or other from the bench; and to these they