Supreme Court of Ohio / Reporter of Decisions / A message from the Reporter

Reporter of Decisions - A message from the Reporter

Ralph W. Preston, Reporter

After the Justices themselves and the Clerk's Office, the Reporter's Office is the oldest department of the Supreme Court of Ohio. Established by the court in 1823, the Reporter's Office reports -- publishes -- the Supreme Court's opinions, entries, miscellaneous orders, and rule amendments in the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Ohio Official Reports.

Opinions Reported:
The Reporter's Office also posts opinions of the Supreme Court, courts of appeals, the Court of Claims, and selected trial courts to the Supreme Court's Web site. Supreme Court opinions going back to 1992 can be found at http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/ROD/documents/ by using the search index located there. Amendments and proposed amendments to the Supreme Court's rules can be searched at http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/Rule/List.asp.

Opinions Posted to the Court's Web Site:

In 2003, 337 Supreme Court opinions and 261 Case Announcements were posted to the Web site, as were 5,868 court of appeals, 748 Court of Claims, and 39 trial court opinions. The Supreme Court's database of opinions contains literally thousands of opinions that are easily searchable and accessible to the public at no charge.

Amendments to the Rules for the Reporting of Opinions:

Amendments to the Rules for the Reporting of Opinions were adopted by the Supreme Court, effective May 1, 2002. The amendments will revolutionize the reporting of opinions in Ohio and will make Ohio a leader in the electronic publication of opinions.

Highlights to the new Rules for Reporting Opinions are as follows:

Pinpoint page references need be given only to official sources and not to parallel sources.

The unique WebCite -- in the form of 2002-Ohio-1234 -- generated by the new Opinions Search Index will be used as part of case citations in order to tie print-published opinions to their Web versions.

Paragraphs of text will be numbered so that references to text will be to the paragraph and not to the volume and page of a particular publisher's series of books.

Wherever possible, links to court of appeals opinions will be placed in Supreme Court opinions that are posted to the court's Web site.

The use of "unreported" in the citations of court of appeals opinions has been eliminated because the new Rules for Reporting Opinions has abolished the distinction between controlling and persuasive precedent. Examples of how to cite court of appeals opinions are given.

Italicization will be limited to case captions and emphasized portions of text. Dropping the overuse of italics will bring Ohio into line with usage around the United States.

The use of cardinal and ordinal numbers has been simplified.

In order to achieve consistency between the Web site and print-published opinions, Supreme Court opinions will be numbered by using four digits-hyphen-four digits, as 2002-0001, 2002-0012, 2002-0123 and 2002-1234. Entering 02-1 into the Web site's opinions search index, for example, will pull up opinions numbered 02-1, 02-11, 02-100, 02-1000, etc. Using 2002-0001 should pull up only one case.

Revisions to the Manual of Citations

A manual, Revisions to the Manual of Citations, has been prepared and circulated to the Justices' offices. The revisions are posted on the court's Web site at http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/ROD/pdf/Rev_Manual_Cit_02.pdf.

Thank you for the opportunity to be of service to the court.

Ralph W. Preston
Reporter of Decisions

The court's website can be found at http://www.sconet.state.oh.us. The index from which users can access the Supreme Court's, Appellate District's and Court of Claims' opinions can be found at http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/documents/.

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