With a preface by Michael H. Hoeflich, John H. & John M. KaneProfessor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law and anintroduction by William E. Butler, John Edward Fowler DistinguishedProfessor of Law, Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School ofLaw and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Law at University CollegeLondon; Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.Includes the text of Vol. 1, No. 1 (Oct. 21, 1876) to Vol. 1, No. 26(April 14, 1877), originally published: St. Paul, Minn.: J.B. West &Co. 1876-1877."In 1876, John B. West, twenty-four years old, launched a newpublication that would within a decade evolve into the NationalReporter System. As a traveling salesman for an office supply companyin St. Paul, young West visited many Minnesota attorneys. He learnedthat the official publishers of court reports were chronically slow.West was later to say that if the official state publishers had beenproperly doing their jobs there would have been no need for hisreporters.His first publication, The Syllabi was an eight-page weekly news-sheetthat contained "prompt and reliable intelligence as to the variousquestions adjudicated by the Minnesota Courts at a date long prior tothe publication of the State Reports."Its immediate popularity among the bar soon forced it to outgrow itsoriginal format and coverage. In early 1877, only six months after ithad begun, The Syllabi was replaced by the North-Western Reporter. Thereporter, another weekly, was also a transitional publication. Itcontained the full text of all Minnesota Supreme Court decisions andMinnesota federal court decisions, as well as those from the WisconsinSupreme Court in cases "of special importance." This publicationlasted two years, four semi-annual volumes.In 1879, West announced a new series of the North Western Reporter(the first of the modern West regional reporters) that would publishthe full text of all current supreme court decisions from Iowa,Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and the Dakota Territory.The Federal Reporter and the Supreme Court Reporter began within thenext two years and, in 1885, West Publishing (as it was incorporatedin 1882) announced the publication of four new reporters that, alongwith its current reports, gave it nationwide coverage. (.) TheNational Reporter System was soon proclaimed to have "Unquestionablyrevolutionized the whole plan of law reporting." --Thomas A. Woxland & Patti J. Ogden, Landmarks in American Legal Publishing. An Exhibit Catalogue 38-40.
