United States Reports

Volumes of the United States Reports on the shelf at a law library

United States Reports are the official record of all the cases that the United States Supreme Court has heard.

Contents

The United States Reports include many types of information, like:

• The Court's decisions and orders on each case
  • This includes majority opinions, concurring opinions, and dissenting opinions
• Lists of every case the Court decides

Citation

In the United States, when lawyers want to talk or write about a Supreme Court decision, they cite the United States Reports. For example, the case Brown, et al., v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, is cited this way:

Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

This tells the lawyer that the decision of the Court in the case entitled Brown v. Board of Education (as properly abbreviated), decided in 1954, can be found in volume 347 of the United States Reports, starting on page 483.