These words by the political philosopher Edmund Burke are as true today as when he said them in the House of Commons in the late 18th century. It is a resounding defence not just of the practice of law reporting, but of open justice (of which it is, of course, a part). Yet the recording of those maxims, rules and principles – in short legal precedents – over the eight centuries or so of the English common law has been decidedly uneven.
Regular reporting began with the Year Books, transcribed from the Plea Rolls begun in 1189. The Year Books, which ran from 1285 to 1537, contained notes of cases written up in Anglo-Norman by apprentices to the law. Henry de Bracton, Chancellor of Exeter Cathedral and assize judge, who died in 1268, based his classic work on The
