the supreme court. Such official reporter may, with the approval and consent of the supreme court, appoint such assistant or assistants as may be necessary to carry on the work of his office, whose compensation shall not exceed two thousand dollars a year for each person so employed, to be paid out of the state treasury upon the warrant of the state auditor. No case in the courts of appeals shall be reported for publication except such as may be selected by the several courts of appeals, or by a maiority of the judges thereof. Whenever it has been thus decided to report a case for publication the syllabus thereof shall be prepared by the judge delivering the opinion, and approved by a majority of the members of the court; and the report may be per curiam, or if an opinion be reported, the same shall be written in as brief and concise form as may be consistent with a clear presentation of the law of the case. Opinions for permanent publication in book form shall be furnished to the reporter of the supreme court and to no other person. Only such cases as are hereafter reported in accordance with the provisions of this section shall be recognized by and receive the official sanction of any court within the state. SEC. 1488. With the approval and under the direction of the supreme court, the reporter may contract with a responsible person, firm or corporation, resident of and doing business in the state of Ohio, to furnish materials, print and bind the reports of the supreme court, courts of appeals and such of the inferior courts of the state as are designated by the reporter, with the approval of the chief justice of the supreme court. Such contract shall provide for the delivery to the clerk of the supreme court of three hundred and fifty copies of each volume of reports without expense to the state. The said contract shall also provide for the furnishing of an additional number of copies of each volume sufficient to supply the demand of the citizens of the state to be sold by the contractor to persons or companies in this state at not exceeding * two dollars and fifty cents per volume. No such contract shall be for a period greater than two years. * * * The contractor shall have the exclusive right to publish such reports during the term of the contract. * * SEC. 1520. Each court of appeals may appoint one or more official stenographers. They shall take an oath of office, serve at the pleasure of the court, perform such duties as the court directs, and have such powers as are vested in official stenographers of the common pleas court. Provided, however, that whenever an opinion, per curiam or report of a case has been prepared in accordance with section 1483 of the General Code as herein amended, it shall be the duty of the official stenographer to immediately forward one copy of such opinion per curiam or report to the reporter of the supreme court, without cost or expense to the supreme court reporter. SECTION 2. That original sections 1483, 1488 and 1520 of the General Code be, and the same are hereby repealed. In brief, the law now provides for the obligatory official editing and publishing of the Appellate Court Reports in bound form on the same satisfactory basis as has been the case for many years with the reports of our other Court of last resort, the Supreme Court. Rule XII of the Rules of the Appellate Courts has been made the law of Ohio. "Opinions for permanent publication in book form shall be furnished to the reporter of the supreme court and to no other person. Only such cases as are hereafter reported in accordance with the provisions of this section shall be recognized by and receive the official sanction of any court within the state. Sec. 1483 G. C. O.; 108 O. L. Furthermore, the official stenographers of the Appellate Courts must immediately upon filing furnish copies of opinions for report to the Reporter of the Supreme Court, without cost. Sec. 1520, G. C. O.; 108 O. L. In addition to the approval of this report your Committee requests that this Association pass a resolution requesting all Appellate Judges to send their decisions to the Supreme Court Reporter to be published only in the official edition of the Appellate Court Reports, and to discontinue sending them to the Ohio Law Reporter and the Ohio Law Bulletin. It is up to the Judges themselves, as before stated, to strictly enforce this new law, and bring order into the breach where chaos and confusion have so long existed. If this is done and it will be done, as our Judiciary has never failed us in any crisis or emergency—no longer will frequent enquiries be filtering into law libraries and others from outside of the State, like the following from Little, Brown & Company, the well known Boston law publishers: "Will you kindly inform us as to the difference between your Ohio Circuit Court of Appeals Reports and the Ohio Appellate Reports." Nor again from our own bar will we hear such just criticisms as this: "The plan of labelling and designating these Reports is confusing: "Beginning with Vol. 15, Ohio Circuit Court Reports (New Series) up to and including Vol. 26 Ohio Circuit Reports (New Series), they are labelled at the bottom, Appellate Reports. Vols. 26 and 27 are labelled, 'Continuing Vols. 1-26 C. C.-N. S.,' and now comes Ohio Appellate Reports 8. "How can these reports be intelligently cited? How can this volume be Vol. 8?" The publisher who proposes to defy the law will probably say that the judge who writes an opinion is not the proprietor thereof, and that no copyright exists in such opinions or syllabus if prepared by the judge. (1888) Banks vs. Manchester, 128 U. S. 244, affirming 23 Fed. 143. But it has also been held that the reporter may copyright such part as represents his intellectual labor, viz.: The title-page, table of cases, statement of facts, arguments of counsel, index, order of arrangement of cases, division of reports into volumes, numbering and paging, table of cases cited, sub-division of index into condensed titles, etc., etc.,-a very comprehensive possible copyright. (1888) Callaghan vs. Myers, 128 U. S. 617. It has also been held, and cannot be denied, that a court has control over its decisions and "the public has only a restricted right to inspect and copy same. (1906) ex Parte Brown, 166 Ind. 593. As pointed out in the report of this Committee at the 1917 meeting (38 O. S. Bar Association Report, 38) if the official reporter receives all of the decisions direct from the courts, as is now provided by law, he can refuse to furnish copies thereof for publication in advance of official report, at least until the publisher agrees to his plan of an orderly uniform system of reporting as required by law. The exact question, as pointed out in that report, has been passed upon by the Supreme Court of Connecticut, saying: "It was not without good reasons that our statutes on this subject were passed. It is of public concern that the judicial reports should not be published until they are 'prepared by the reporter and ready for publication.' Until that time the opinion, as well as the statement of the case and the syllabus, ought to be open for any correction that may be necessary for the proper understanding of the case. Until that time they cannot be relied on as necessarily expressing the final voice of the court and therefore as entitled to be published. "At any rate, it cannot be the duty of the reporter, directly or indirectly, to contravene the policy of the state in this behalf-a policy which it is not claimed has ever prevented any one from obtaining a copy of any judicial opinion as soon as filed, who wanted it for his information or to gratify his curiosity, and which has helped to secure the accuracy of the published reports. The effort to expedite the publication of judicial opinions is commendable. Absolute accuracy is, however, much more important than mere celerity." (1892) Peck vs. Hooker, 61 Conn. 413, 419. Independently of all questions of copyright, the State has the right to direct as to how the reports of the several courts shall be published, and having so directed, as to the Appellate Court Reports by the new legislation, that they should be published under the supervision of the Supreme Court Reporter, all other rights of earlier publication must yield, unless satisfactory arrangements for copies of such decisions for advance and not permanent publication in the law magazines can be effected with the Supreme Court Reporter by the private publishers interested. Your Committee feels sure that the "gentlemen's agreement" entered into by all the publishers on January 10th, 1919, and rendered workable by the Spidel Bill, which became law on May 10th, solves this question finally, but we must have the active co-operation of the entire bar of the State, and especially of the entire Judiciary, and particularly of the Appellate Judges themselves, in order to ensure complete success and a "uniform system of reporting" for our fair State of Ohio, which private publishers of law reports have so long discredited, both at home and abroad. Respectfully submitted, DANIEL W. IDDINGS, SMITH W. BEnnett, DON C. HENDERSON, SILAS S. RICHARDS, Committee. Past President Allen Andrews, of Hamilton, then assumed the Chair. PRESIDENT BROWN:-Mr. Chairman, as one of that Committee, having been on the Committee since its appointment possibly four or five years ago, at which time our late friend, George R. Young, of Dayton, I think, was the Chairman, it became my privilege and duty to work and I have worked for at least four years on that Committee. It so happened this year when this matter came before the legislature under what our very good friend, Mr. Iddings, has called the Spidel Bill, that Mr. Iddings, the Chairman of this Committee, was tied up in a most important trial at Governor's Island, New York, under a law that I do not know anything about, the court martial law of the United States and the Judge Advocate's decisions. I got a dispatch along some time in the winter to go down to Columbus and I went there and I stayed there until this Bill got through the legislature. There was some trouble about it, too. Everybody agreed it was a good law except some people thought that the increase of price from $1.50 to $2.50 was a robbery of the people. The people haven't anything to do with it. We folks here have to pay that bill. The farmer and the store-keeper do not buy those volumes and they wouldn't understand them if they did. I want to give due credit to my Brother Iddings and to say that never has a man done any more work, in season and out of season, and no one has done any better work than my Brother Iddings, of Dayton, has done. We have that law passed, as I referred to it yesterday in my address. The scandal of independent publications with syllabi prepared by Tom, Dick and Harry, God knows who, has been done away with or will be done away with. We have a right to know now and will know what the law of the Court of Appeals, which is one of the Supreme Courts of the State, is and I simply hope that the report as presented by the Chairman, Mr. Iddings, will be adopted enthusiastically by this convention. That is all I desire to say in that matter. I know by personal experience what we have gone through. Let's not have to do it again. S. S. RICHARDS, of Clyde:-As one member of this committee I hope its report will meet with the approval of this Convention and be adopted. The bar and bench of this state have lived under the confusion necessarily following the issuance of three sets of reports of the decisions of the Courts of Appeal long enough. I think that I speak in behalf of a very large majority of the Judges of the Courts of Appeal when I say that they are in favor of the law which has been enacted by the General Assembly and |