Supreme Court of the United States Reporter of Decisions - Definition and Overview

The Reporter of Decisions of the United States Supreme Court is the official charged with editing and publishing the Court's decisions both when announced and in the bound volumes of the United States Reports.

The first two reporters acted in an unofficial capacity. Only in 1816, after the Supreme Court had existed for a quarter-century, did Congress created an official post of reporter and added a $1,000 a year salary in the Judiciary Act of 1817. The reporter also profited from selling the printed volumes of the reports of decisions. In 1874, Congress for the first time appropriated funds to publish the volumes; from that time the report was known as the United States Reports and numbering began as if Dallas's first volume was number one. In 1922 the Government Printing Office took over publication of the United States Reports.

List of Reporters

The reporters of decisions are listed here with their tenures and the numbers of the volumes of the United States Reports they edited. Until volume 90, the volumes were also by the name of the reporter and the numbers of those nominative reports are listed after the U.S. Reports numbers. The post was vacant from 1944 to 1946.

1. Alexander J. Dallas (1790-1800); 1-4 (Dallas 1-4)
2. William Cranch, (1801-1815); 5-13 (Cranch 1-9)
3. Henry Wheaton, (1816-1827); 14-25 (Wheat. 1-12)
4. Richard Peters, (1828-1842); 26-41 (Peters 1-24)
5. Benjamin Chew Howard, (1843-1860); 42-65 (Howard 1-24)
6. Jeremiah Sullivan Black, (1861-1862); 66-67 (Black 1-2)
7. John William Wallace, (1863-1874); 68-90 (Wall. 1-23)
8. William Tod Otto, (1875-1883); 91-107
9. John Chandler Bancroft Davis, (1883-1902); 108-186
10. Charles Henry Butler, (1902-1916); 187-241
11. Ernest Knaebel, (1916-1944); 242-321
12. Walter Wyatt, (1946-1963); 322-376
13. Henry Putzel, Jr., (1964-1979); 376-449
14. Henry Curtis Lind, (1979-1989); 440-479
15. Frank D. Wagner, (1989?-to date); 480-