Mitch: The earlier Hawaii cases are digested in the Hawaii Digest. A
professor here was looking for early real property cases from Hawaii... he
had the Digest topic and key number, and I had someone with the Hawaii Digest
fax me the relevant pages ... the prof found cases cited from the early part
of this century that he had not turned up before.
Apparently when West created most of the state digests at the beginning of
this century (well after the NRS started in the 1880's), their editors went
back and digested all cases pre-NRS for each state. These digest paragraphs
appear NOWHERE ELSE but in the state digests. For a law library to have
access to all state cases, then, it should have all published state digests.
(Or at least those from states in existence before the 1880's). In Texas,
for example, the Texas Digest covers all cases from 1840 (Republic of Texas)
forward. Of course, only those cases after the 1880's will have a West NRS
citation; all earlier case digest paragraphs cite only to the pre-NRS state
reports.
(P.S. Mitch: You don't remember this from taking my "Information Resources in
the Law" at UT Austin Library School in 1987???) ;-)
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Jim Hambleton jhamble@onramp.net
Texas Wesleyan University 214-579-5721 (v)
School of Law Library 214-579-5797 (f)
2535 East Grauwyler Road
Irving, TX 75061
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