Key Number System in Europe

Origins of the American Digests. The Regional Reporter
Although recording of case decisions dates back as early as the 1600s, the organized system of categorizing and cataloging the cases in the United States started in 1879, in Minnesota. John West, the founder of West Publishing Company began publishing Minnesota case opinions without much success. But he expanded his reporter business to the neighboring states, creating the first “regional” court report system in the United States.

As the number of case decisions grew, West developed a system that classified the law into topics and subtopics with the use of the West’s Key Number System.

From the 1880s, each court opinion that was to be published by West was analyzed and assigned one or more topics along with key numbers based upon the legal principles addressed in the opinion.

The National Reporter System and Key Numbers
The Key Numbers were employed in the National Reporter System (and most other West publications), creating a detailed system of classification that, with the time, divides the case law
into more than 400 separate topics.

More categories are added as the development of the law requires. Each topic is divided into subtopics (more than 100.000 in total), and each subtopic is assigned a key number. Some topics has only two dozen of keys and related subtopics while other topics have hundreds of subtopics and related keys.

New topics and keys are added maybe too slowly. The digest system does not keep up with the
changing trends of the law. The Key Number System is affected by the shortcomings of the Digests.

Key Number System and Court Decisions

Topics and key numbers are listed near the beginning of an opinion, each followed
by a brief paragraph setting forth the corresponding legal principle drawn from the
case. A key-numbered paragraph that sets forth a legal principle is called a headnote (see Headnotes).

The key numbers form the basis of the digest system. A digest is a collection of all
the headnotes from an associated series of volumes, arranged alphabetically by topic and
by key number. There is generally a digest for all the jurisdictions in the U.S. judicial
system.

See Also

• U.S. Digests
• National Reporter System
• Selective Publication of Cases
• Digests and American Law Reports
• American Digest System
• U.S. States Court Reports
• List of U.S. Federal Court Reports
• Legal opinions
• Corpus Juris Secundum
• American Digest System